24 Nov
2015
24 Nov
'15
6:16 p.m.
On 11/24/2015 07:34 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
Judging a language without even looking at it seems
rather odd.
Pascal is largely obsolete now, but I still appreciate it -- of the 40 or so languages I
know, there are only two where I could go from no knowledge at all to having a working
program of significant size in one week: Pascal and Python.
I mostly LOVED Pascal,
and years ago it was my language of
choice for most things.
I wrote some significant programs in it, first Borland's
Turbo Pascal, later DEC Pascal on the Vax.
I recently revived my biggest Pascal program, which I had
run in Windows 2K and XP, but had not maintained in over a
decade. the Linux Free Pascal Compiler came out, which was
aimed specifically at compiling Turbo and DEC pascal
variants. This program converted Gerber photoplot files to
a raster format for my laser photoplotter. I was able to
get the original program working with minimal effort
directly under Linux. It runs a lot faster, too.
My only complaints with Pascal were the I/O was a bit clunky
and slow, and the stupid / vs. div for real vs. integer
divides. Otherwise, I really thought it was great.
Jon