12 Aug
1998
12 Aug
'98
1:56 p.m.
On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, D. Peschel wrote:
I've decided that Pascal is cool but is also a
pain to use. It's
somewhat of an offshoot from normal Apple software; I don't know how
much Apple updated it over the years; it's cranky (your disk drives must
be in slot 6 -- also, if you switch disks at unexpected times the
program gets discombobulated); and even compared with other versions of
the UCSD software, it's a little unusual. UCSD updated their Pascal
system through two more versions (III.x and IV.x) but Apple stayed at
II.x.
I'll just say this: Apple UCSD Pascal blows.
As you mentioned, if you put the wrong disk in, it does not give you a way
to recover. I know its hard to believe any software could be worse than
Windows at error recovery, but Apple Pascal was. I once lost my entire
disk of Pascal programs because the OS could not find the right disk. The
error message was something like "Volume not found: directory erased". I
kid you not. It was like "Gee, I didn't find the disk I wanted, so my
head exploded and I just formatted your disk with all your class projects
for no logical reason. Duh."
The compiler was slow but decent. The editor was crummy. The "OS" was
really more of a worse-than-crud menu system.
Still, SirTech software built Wizardry--one of the all time best games
ever--in Apple Pascal, and it was highly successful. So it was usable.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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