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Re: "I learned Pascal in uni and haven't touched it in ages, but..."
APL?
Oct 12 · 2 months ago
There are several problems with the C programming language, but the alternatives seems to avoid many of the good features of C and add some things that also aren't very good, in my opinion. So, I use the C programming language; it is not quite really bad enough that I will not use it, I think.
(I have used Pascal as well, to modify ZZT. Turbo Pascal seems like it is a reasonable programming language for writing DOS programs.)
🐙 norayr [mod] · Oct 23 at 00:11:
freepascal is an amazing compiler. it supports turbo pascal dialect if one wants to have that limit. it supports iso mode if you happen to need it. it supports delphi object pascal mode.
it generates very fast code, and in some benchmarks i have shared here, it shares first place with go and c.
🐙 norayr [mod] · Oct 23 at 00:26:
horrible standard library
this is a comment left by andreas borchert in comp.lang.oberon in the middle of nineties:
The libc is certainly not a good guide:
* Buffer overruns are not ruled out by design: gets, sscanf etc.
* Interface inconsistencies: gets vs fgets, fgets vs fscanf (note
the position of the file stream parameter)
* Bad interfaces like that of getchar() whose return code
can be a character or an error code
* Particularly bad buffering system which
– ignores the block structure of underlying file systems, and
– does not support bidirectional buffering
* No provisions exist such that independent libraries can cooperate
with each other in
– signal handling,
– setting up alarms, and
– tracking childs.
(Please note that I do not want to bash Ritchie, Kernighan etc. The
libc is history and should be taken as such… It is time to abandon
C and the libc and it does not help to place other systems on top of this historic relic.)
i save a link to the usenet post via google groups, it was available years ago, but not now:
🐻 TardisKun · Dec 01 at 19:04:
@norayr alternate link ;-)
🐙 norayr [mod] · Dec 02 at 00:16:
TardisKun, thank you.
I've also learned Pascal have ages, both in school and university. Is it still relevant?
I learned Pascal in uni and haven't touched it in ages, but I'm thinking of picking it up again after reading how much less computation-expensive than, say, Python. Does anyone have any suggestions on good ways to get started again? Also, any thoughts about the virtues of Pascal vs. its related languages like, e.g. Ada?