4 ms·

Pascal's I/O was broken. Strings were broken. Every Pascal I ever worked with (with the exception of the Pascal I used in school) had extensions to make it wor

by kabdib 15y ago

Pascal's I/O was broken. Strings were broken. Every Pascal I ever worked with (with the exception of the Pascal I used in school) had extensions to make it work in the Real World. Unextended Pascal was a toy. Apple was a Pascal shop in the 80s, but they extended it to the point that I just translated (in my head) the C code that I wanted to write into the variant of Pascal they'd implemented. Pascal had a couple of nice things that C didn't (nested procedures, for one), but they weren't used all that much by us. Strings were still a pain. Str255 stunk, and everyone knew it, but nobody had anything that was dramatically better.

pmiller2 15y ago
I disagree. Unextended Pascal is not a toy: it's a tool to teach computer science and structured programming. In a classroom environment in the 1970's, it's not relevant that strings have to have a defined, fixed length. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by I/O being broken, but I'd wager that's not a big deal in a classroom environment, either. In any case, evaluating unextended Pascal as anything other than a teaching tool is like complaining that a hacksaw isn't very good for screwing in screws. Talk about "wrong tool for the job!" :-)
- Avshalom 15y ago
  The quote -from Wirth himself- was not about classroom environments, it was about software engineer(s|ing).
  - pmiller2 15y ago
    True. But, "high-level, type-safe language" need not refer to unextended Pascal, and I see no evidence that it was intended to. He could have meant Algol W. Depending on when it was written, he could have meant Modula 2, Modula 3, or Oberon.
    - kabdib 15y ago
      Serious question: Why is it that we generally see only toy systems being done in these languages. I don't mean to offend. If I'm unaware of major pieces of software done in Modula-N or Oberon, then feel free to correct me. I only know of some teaching-level and research OS work, and some GUI work, but little in the way of commercial stuff.

by kabdib 15y ago

pmiller2 15y ago

I disagree. Unextended Pascal is not a toy: it's a tool to teach computer science and structured programming. In a classroom environment in the 1970's, it's not relevant that strings have to have a defined, fixed length. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by I/O being broken, but I'd wager that's not a big deal in a classroom environment, either. In any case, evaluating unextended Pascal as anything other than a teaching tool is like complaining that a hacksaw isn't very good for screwing in screws. Talk about "wrong tool for the job!" :-)

Avshalom 15y ago
The quote -from Wirth himself- was not about classroom environments, it was about software engineer(s|ing).
- pmiller2 15y ago
  True. But, "high-level, type-safe language" need not refer to unextended Pascal, and I see no evidence that it was intended to. He could have meant Algol W. Depending on when it was written, he could have meant Modula 2, Modula 3, or Oberon.
  - kabdib 15y ago
    Serious question: Why is it that we generally see only toy systems being done in these languages. I don't mean to offend. If I'm unaware of major pieces of software done in Modula-N or Oberon, then feel free to correct me. I only know of some teaching-level and research OS work, and some GUI work, but little in the way of commercial stuff.