2 Dec
2014
2 Dec
'14
5:09 p.m.
On 02/12/14 12:08 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
On 12/02/2014 07:20 AM, Mark Wickens wrote:
You can give it up any time. There are dozens of far better languages
that have cropped up in the 40 years since C was invented for a
particular environment (that doesn't resemble anything much we do today).
Is there any general agreement on what the
'best' programming language is
for PDP-11 for this kind of application, if I'm getting what you're after
it's something like wordstar or WPS-PLUS? A text editor with some word
processing features. Good system integration and the ability to easily
control a terminal?
I know VAX Pascal is highly respected and can do most things - certainly
Theo De Klerk's book is very comprehensive.
I don't know *anything* about programming PDP-11's. Would be
interested if
there is one language or it's a case of pick and choose like VAXen.
Our shop at the time (1975-1981 or so, for the PDP-11) used FORTRAN. I
had a passion
for Pascal, also got a Modula 2 compiler but never really moved to it.
We then got a
VAX 11/780, and I used them until the migration to the Alpha systems,
and used
those until the end of DEC. We continued to run one Alpha here until it
became so
obsolete that nobody would use it anymore. We were STILL mostly a FORTRAN
shop. I created a few personal apps in Pascal.
Now that I use Linux pretty exclusively, I have grudgingly accepted C. Recently,
the Free Pascal Compiler (fpc) became available on Linux, and it is quite
amazing. I ported over a Turbo Pascal for Windows app that ran on Windows
95/Win 2K to run on Linux in a couple days. It required some serious
hacking
to remove external hardware-specific parts that were no longer applicable,
but the main thrust of FPC was to handle DEC and Borland Pascal extensions
to the language well. They really did a good job! So, after a long
time away
from Pascal, it is again a viable language. I doubt I'd ever write a major
app in Pascal again, but I could if I wanted.
Well, none of the above really applies to the PDP-11! I will say that a
major
advantage with Pascal is that when I got a program to pass the compiler's
syntax checking, it very often ran correctly the first time!
Yes, this is true of most statically checked environments,
*particularly* the modern ones that derive from ML. The ML family exists
because nothing else at the time could offer the necessary correctness
for writing proof checkers.
It forces you
to think logically, structure well, and doesn't have all the insane hidden
syntactic screwups that C does.
Amen. I'm the generation that foolishly got sucked into the dangerous
superficialities of C after using Pascal. Today I know better.
--Toby
I still get called in at work to advise
when C programs don't work right. I'm still discovering new ways that
C code that looks perfectly correct can screw up horribly. ...
Jon