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wtd

Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:21 pm


A blast from the past

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So to get my wife interested in programming I had to dig out the only language she ever really learned back in her days as a programmer geek.  Brace yourselves.

Pascal.

But it's kinda fun now.  We're both learning it together.  

I was able to grab the program HelloWorld;
begin
   WriteLn('Hello, world!')
end.


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Paul

Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:43 pm



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Is pascal useful? if it is, and if it really is as you say it is... then I'd look into it.


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wtd

Tue Oct 05, 2004 5:49 pm



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Well, it can be.  Borland's Delphi, one of the most popular development platforms for Windows, is basically Pascal.


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zylum

Tue Oct 05, 2004 8:32 pm



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pascal is still a very popular language and from what i've heard almost all the schools in asia teach programming with pascal. Also it is one of the few languages you're allowed to use in programming contests


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McKenzie

Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:25 pm



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Pascal was designed to teach programming, not unlike Turing.  Because the language was so nice it gained wide-spread acceptance.  I'm not sure how much it is used these days but there is still loads of code floating around.  I thought it would get a resurgance with Delphi but Delphi never took off the way it could have.


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wtd

Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:27 pm



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I don't know.  Delphi seems to be quite popular, but just lacks hype.

On the other hand, it would have helped if Borland had made more than a half-hearted attempt to turn Kylix into a real option for programming on Linux.


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McKenzie

Wed Oct 13, 2004 7:46 pm



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I know Delphi has a following, but back in '94 I was hoping that it would overtake VB. It came out of the gate with so many features that VB couldn't touch. As usual MS wins through strength of marketing not strength of product.