9 ms·

And it was learnable. I mean, you could learn every detail of the language with a reasonable effort. Just read through the manuals, which are extremely well wri

by jonsen 14y ago

And it was learnable. I mean, you could learn every detail of the language with a reasonable effort. Just read through the manuals, which are extremely well written. Not many modern languages you can say that about.

tomjen3 14y ago
I very much disagree with this. Java is much more modern, but you can learn the entire language in some months of work. I will grant you that it will take longer to learn all the libraries you want to use, along with the entire Java standard library, effective design of Java programs, etc. But the languages haven't gotten much bigger over the years.
- tisme 14y ago
  I have a 2 foot tall stack of Java manuals here that beg to differ :) Java is big, the java ecosystem is huge. Sure, it does more than turbo pascal, but if you're able to go from 0 to learning the entire language in a few months of work then you're a pretty hard worker! Going from 0 to knowing turbo pascal (language, ecosystem, ide) inside out in a few months is no remarkable feat.
  - bad_user 14y ago
    Java is big, the java ecosystem is huge. Sure it is. However you don't have to learn all of it. I never learned much about Swing, AWT, JSP, JSF, EJB, Struts, Spring, Hibernate and all that crap. I tried them out at some point, but eventually I had the common sense to just say no. You're basically comparing a language with the entire ecosystem of another. I remember trying to make MOD files play in Turbo Pascal, which left me with about 200k of memory for whatever else I wanted to do. I remember trying to read BMP files and because I had no available libraries, I had to implement the functionality by my own (and forget about GIFs or Jpegs). I remember trying to create a window with a button in Windows 3.11 and for some reason whatever I did was freezing my computer, so I had to reboot all over again, until finally giving up in agony. I know at least one man that gave up on programming when the transition to Windows happened, because Borland Pascal was so goddamn awful for anything not involving a text interface running in 286 real mode - that it left that man with the impression that programming was not for him. Yes, you can go from 0 to "knowing turbo pascal" in a short time. However that doesn't mean much, when in that same time you can accomplish so much more in a modern environment, even if you end up just scratching the surface.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  You can certainly learn Java (the language) and a small part of basic libraries in a couple of months But to learn "the entire" language is impossible (this applies pretty much to everything today) But Turbo Pascal is probably the size of JS+jQuery today (in number of "things" you can do)
mtkd 14y ago
There was a conversation in a ruby channel about this recently. I mentioned that if 15 years ago you had suggested that in 2012 you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application - we would have laughed. I got shot down - "it's a web application now, so not comparable". But I really think it is comparable. The number of technologies you need to know reasonably well to do a basic business function online is nuts. To make it worse the number of flavours of languages or components involved and the requirement to hire vertical developers (specialising in one language) rather than developers who could understand the full domain means that business web apps are becoming unmaintainable more quickly. These tools and languages in the hands of startup teams with above average commitment/experience/knowledge are fantastic, but for general business use they are big step backwards. I've noticed several sites recently that are including more than one version of JQuery (and a copy of Prototype) on the same page - which is a symptom of this to me. Don't get me started that I could press F9(?) 15 years ago and Turbo Pascal would build in 2 secs on a 386. Takes irb that long to start on this 8 core.
- dagw 14y ago
  you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application People are working on that. For example I've started to learn clojure and recently wrote a very simple web app using Clojurescript, Noir, Korma and a couple of helper libraries like fetch and crate. Using that stack I managed to write an entire web app without ever leaving Clojure. Everything felt like clojure and the borders between client-server-database was rather fuzzy.
  - VMG 14y ago
    I'd be very interested in a writeup or a link to your repository
    - dagw 14y ago
      Honestly, everything I know I copied badly from http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/20/overtone-and-clojurescript/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/20/overtone-and-clojure... so you're probably better off going straight to the source as it where.
bad_user 14y ago
That's not true. I remember trying to learn Turbo Vision, this text-based GUI library that it came with. The reference documentation that it came with was awful and I tried doing that with the help of a book. Couldn't understand anything.
- jonsen 14y ago
  The Turbo Vision library came with version 6. The language was still well documented in ver. 6. I aggree that Turbo Vision was not easy to grasp.

by jonsen 14y ago

tomjen3 14y ago

I very much disagree with this. Java is much more modern, but you can learn the entire language in some months of work. I will grant you that it will take longer to learn all the libraries you want to use, along with the entire Java standard library, effective design of Java programs, etc. But the languages haven't gotten much bigger over the years.

tisme 14y ago
I have a 2 foot tall stack of Java manuals here that beg to differ :) Java is big, the java ecosystem is huge. Sure, it does more than turbo pascal, but if you're able to go from 0 to learning the entire language in a few months of work then you're a pretty hard worker! Going from 0 to knowing turbo pascal (language, ecosystem, ide) inside out in a few months is no remarkable feat.
- bad_user 14y ago
  Java is big, the java ecosystem is huge. Sure it is. However you don't have to learn all of it. I never learned much about Swing, AWT, JSP, JSF, EJB, Struts, Spring, Hibernate and all that crap. I tried them out at some point, but eventually I had the common sense to just say no. You're basically comparing a language with the entire ecosystem of another. I remember trying to make MOD files play in Turbo Pascal, which left me with about 200k of memory for whatever else I wanted to do. I remember trying to read BMP files and because I had no available libraries, I had to implement the functionality by my own (and forget about GIFs or Jpegs). I remember trying to create a window with a button in Windows 3.11 and for some reason whatever I did was freezing my computer, so I had to reboot all over again, until finally giving up in agony. I know at least one man that gave up on programming when the transition to Windows happened, because Borland Pascal was so goddamn awful for anything not involving a text interface running in 286 real mode - that it left that man with the impression that programming was not for him. Yes, you can go from 0 to "knowing turbo pascal" in a short time. However that doesn't mean much, when in that same time you can accomplish so much more in a modern environment, even if you end up just scratching the surface.
raverbashing 14y ago
You can certainly learn Java (the language) and a small part of basic libraries in a couple of months But to learn "the entire" language is impossible (this applies pretty much to everything today) But Turbo Pascal is probably the size of JS+jQuery today (in number of "things" you can do)

mtkd 14y ago

There was a conversation in a ruby channel about this recently. I mentioned that if 15 years ago you had suggested that in 2012 you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application - we would have laughed. I got shot down - "it's a web application now, so not comparable". But I really think it is comparable. The number of technologies you need to know reasonably well to do a basic business function online is nuts. To make it worse the number of flavours of languages or components involved and the requirement to hire vertical developers (specialising in one language) rather than developers who could understand the full domain means that business web apps are becoming unmaintainable more quickly. These tools and languages in the hands of startup teams with above average commitment/experience/knowledge are fantastic, but for general business use they are big step backwards. I've noticed several sites recently that are including more than one version of JQuery (and a copy of Prototype) on the same page - which is a symptom of this to me. Don't get me started that I could press F9(?) 15 years ago and Turbo Pascal would build in 2 secs on a 386. Takes irb that long to start on this 8 core.

dagw 14y ago
you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application People are working on that. For example I've started to learn clojure and recently wrote a very simple web app using Clojurescript, Noir, Korma and a couple of helper libraries like fetch and crate. Using that stack I managed to write an entire web app without ever leaving Clojure. Everything felt like clojure and the borders between client-server-database was rather fuzzy.
- VMG 14y ago
  I'd be very interested in a writeup or a link to your repository
  - dagw 14y ago
    Honestly, everything I know I copied badly from http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/20/overtone-and-clojurescript/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/20/overtone-and-clojure... so you're probably better off going straight to the source as it where.

bad_user 14y ago

That's not true. I remember trying to learn Turbo Vision, this text-based GUI library that it came with. The reference documentation that it came with was awful and I tried doing that with the help of a book. Couldn't understand anything.

jonsen 14y ago
The Turbo Vision library came with version 6. The language was still well documented in ver. 6. I aggree that Turbo Vision was not easy to grasp.