3 ms·

Essential quoting of the thread: 1. "I was happy to realize that most of the criticism in that essay no longer applies to relatively recent versions of the lan

by narag 9y ago

Essential quoting of the thread: 1. "I was happy to realize that most of the criticism in that essay no longer applies to relatively recent versions of the language/IDE (Delphi 7 in my case)." 2. "Delphi 7 was released in August 2002 (at least according to the Wikipedia page), over 15 years ago. It's hard to think of this as relatively recent." 3. "It's 21 years newer than the critical article he mentioned.." 4. "But that article was not 21 years newer than the first version of TP that was released in 1983." 5. "The first version of Turbo Pascal didn't have object system or modules." Now, you can make your version of what we had in mind when we wrote each comment, but I'm very sure that others would agree that 2 was trying to say that criticism was invalid much earlier than 2002. So when you say that the original article was much older in 3, it seems obvious that you're trying to say that criticism was valid because the article was about a much older version. And then I point in 4 that criticism was no longer valid much earlier than 2002. And then you point in 5 that TP didn't have object system or modules that's a complete non sequitur because the original criticism hardly could criticize lack of object system when its author had not made one for his own language. Actually there's a lot to say against the original article, but that's another story.

varjag 9y ago
First version of Turbo Pascal isn't the language discussed in the topical write-up. Of course Kernighan couldn't be criticising Object Pascal; and the author points out that the language has picked up new features since which makes it far more bearable to him. The point was raised that Delphi isn't "relatively recent", and if that's true, from points 1&2 it then follows that the original Kernighan criticism still applies to it. I pointed out that the criticism is much older than Delphi, giving enough grounds to think an improvement is possible in the timespan of two decades. Then you come with Turbo Pascal 1.0 out of left field, which bears no relation to any of the points. Noone was stating Turbo Pascal 1.0 is a "relatively recent" language, nor that the K's criticism wasn't a good summary of TP1.0 era state of the art.

by narag 9y ago

varjag 9y ago

First version of Turbo Pascal isn't the language discussed in the topical write-up. Of course Kernighan couldn't be criticising Object Pascal; and the author points out that the language has picked up new features since which makes it far more bearable to him. The point was raised that Delphi isn't "relatively recent", and if that's true, from points 1&2 it then follows that the original Kernighan criticism still applies to it. I pointed out that the criticism is much older than Delphi, giving enough grounds to think an improvement is possible in the timespan of two decades. Then you come with Turbo Pascal 1.0 out of left field, which bears no relation to any of the points. Noone was stating Turbo Pascal 1.0 is a "relatively recent" language, nor that the K's criticism wasn't a good summary of TP1.0 era state of the art.