Turbo Pascal7

Hello there, ill cut the long talk and get straight to the point, im a poor student with no money (your average student then) and im in collage doing an A level in Programing, we work with Turbo Pascal7, on the scale of 1-10 (1 being simple programing language-10 being complex Programing language) how would you rate Turbo Pascal7? i am a keen programer and is very intrested.

[CaShY]

its ok for learning programming concepts other than that it doesn't have a tremendous amount of uses.

the only thing i ever made in that was

http://www.whoooop.co.uk/game.exe

its not a virus scan it if ya don't trust me
but it gives you an idea of what turbo pascal can do.

I would Download it but er, file extension blocked at collage. Thanks anyway

[queball]

1

[BesigedB]

its kinda '****' :/

and we have to learn it fs

[BesigedB]

but that game rules. i wish i could make that

[KaneED]

AS Level computing right?

[Gayle29uk]

Niklaus Wirth=Spawn of Satan!

Look on the bright side, at least you're doing Pascal not Modula-2

Oh, and to answer the original question and putting my utter hatred of the language aside, 2. Only BASIC ranks lower.

Gayle
xXx

[Miserableman]

Originally posted by CaShY
its ok for learning programming concepts other than that it doesn't have a tremendous amount of uses.

the only thing i ever made in that was

http://www.whoooop.co.uk/game.exe

its not a virus scan it if ya don't trust me
but it gives you an idea of what turbo pascal can do.

Your monsters are as thick as £%$!

Best game I've seen in Pascal, bar a horse-betting sim I once saw |o/

[CaShY]

Nd computing i do

currently moved on to vb and C

[Iniluki]

Today i found out i'll be learning VB 6 this year "joy".

[MT]

Ask them why they are teaching you a virtually deprecated language, and why they wont teach you vb.net or (ideally) c#

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by MT
Ask them why they are teaching you a virtually deprecated language, and why they wont teach you vb.net or (ideally) c#

I can tell you what the answer will be.

"PASCAL forces you into 'good' structured programming practice. It also forces you to check bounds of arrays etc. It gets you into good habits before you move onto languages that give you more freedom."

Which is a load of cobblers really. If I overflow an array or reference a 'strange' memory location it's because I want to and no damn programming language is going to stop me. Whether it's because I'm writing self modifying code (not done that for years hehe) or whatever I prefer a language that does what I tell it to when I tell it to.

As for the structured programming, any language forces you into that habit these days. The days of 'GOTO considered harmful' (anyone else remember that?) are long gone.

Admittedly jumping straight into C can be a bitch for a novice, I remember helping several people who were struggling pointers and the different ways of passing variables back in my university days (oh so long ago now) so I can see the point of giving them a gradual introduction, I just think it could be done with something a little more useful than PASCAL.

Gayle
xXx

its quite simple, and a good starting point for other languages.

Originally posted by MT
Ask them why they are teaching you a virtually deprecated language, and why they wont teach you vb.net or (ideally) c#

Virtually deprecated... hardly. But then I guess you live on Planet Microsoft like so many people do these days, where the world does begin and end with Microsoft. Well, wake up and get a grip ffs.

Pascal is alive and kicking, all be it in a slightly tweaked form.

For anyone that wants to learn to code, I'd recommend picking Pascal, especially if its a choice between the likes of Borlands Delphi and Kylix or the Microshaft script kiddie world of VB et al.

Turbo Pascal is quite limited these days, not becauses its old, but because the OS restricts what it can and can't do. It is good for teaching purposes because it is structured and can use proper object orientation, but that doesn't mean it will stop you doing stuff.

If you move up the Pascal ladder a little way, you find Delphi and Kylix (Delphi for Linux), so its considerably more portable than Microshafts offerings since a single set of source code can be used to build both Windows and Linux apps.

Once you're through school, the best thing to do though is to try different languages, you may find one that will just click and feel right. If you have access to a RedHat 7.2 system (or a variety of other Linux distros) check out the Borland webby at www.borland.com and get hold of a free copy of Kylix 3 Open Edition I think its called. Give it a try to see what modern Pascal compilers can do.

Originally posted by KaneED
AS Level computing right?

Second year m8. A2

Originally posted by AthenaOfDelphi

Virtually deprecated... hardly. But then I guess you live on Planet Microsoft like so many people do these days, where the world does begin and end with Microsoft. Well, wake up and get a grip ffs.

Pascal is alive and kicking, all be it in a slightly tweaked form.

For anyone that wants to learn to code, I'd recommend picking Pascal, especially if its a choice between the likes of Borlands Delphi and Kylix or the Microshaft script kiddie world of VB et al.

Turbo Pascal is quite limited these days, not becauses its old, but because the OS restricts what it can and can't do. It is good for teaching purposes because it is structured and can use proper object orientation, but that doesn't mean it will stop you doing stuff.

If you move up the Pascal ladder a little way, you find Delphi and Kylix (Delphi for Linux), so its considerably more portable than Microshafts offerings since a single set of source code can be used to build both Windows and Linux apps.

Once you're through school, the best thing to do though is to try different languages, you may find one that will just click and feel right. If you have access to a RedHat 7.2 system (or a variety of other Linux distros) check out the Borland webby at www.borland.com and get hold of a free copy of Kylix 3 Open Edition I think its called. Give it a try to see what modern Pascal compilers can do.

heh

MT hardly lives on planet Mircosoft. I learnt Delphi in the first year at Uni and I have not used it since. I know nobody who still uses it. Pascal is old and has been succeeded and it should go take a seat next to Quick Basic.

Originally posted by Cocaine


heh

MT hardly lives on planet Mircosoft. I learnt Delphi in the first year at Uni and I have not used it since. I know nobody who still uses it. Pascal is old and has been succeeded and it should go take a seat next to Quick Basic.

Check out a timeline for programming languages if thats the only reason you can come up with why Pascal should be forgotten about.

Basic was developed around 1964, 7 years before Pascal. Its still being used today /me waves to the VB coders.
C was developed one year after Pascal in 1972, and its still very much alive and kicking.
Lisp, dated 1959. Used today in various forms, most mentions probably go to EMACS and some of the X Window window managers that use a Lisp based scripting language.
And the best... Boolean algebra. Positively ancient since it was created in the mid 1800's, but do we chuck it away?

Point taken? Just because you don't personally know anyone that codes Delphi or Kylix and Pascal is old, doesn't mean its dead and should be consigned to the trash bin. Besides, you have to ask yourself why Borland still maintain and support it if no one uses it....

In the context of being a teaching tool for teaching structured programming and basic object orientated programming, Turbo Pascal is a dam good choice, and since there are enterprise level tools which can capitalise on the knowledge gained, it is an exceedingly good choice, given it is probably a lot easier to learn than C++ for example.

I don't want to start any kind of flame war since everyone is entitled to their opinion. But, IMHO, too many people write off a language which is far from dead, and then go on to preach the ways of Microsoft. The best thing any coder can do is to try different languages until they find one (or maybe more) they are happy with, and until then... they should simply make a mental note of what people say about a particular language until they get the oppourtunity to form their own opinions.

[Structural Integrity]

Originally posted by Cocaine

Pascal is old and has been succeeded and it should go take a seat next to Quick Basic.

Believe it or not, but my last holiday job consisted making a measuring program for an optical measuringmachine in Quick Basic (Quick Vision Basic actually).
It was supported as scripting language in the package of the machine to make more complicated programs.

The machine it was run on was a 486 or 386 I think with Windows 3.1, so yes, I agree with the "succeeded" part.


BTW, isn't quick basic supported in Windows98? I thought I read something about that on some Internet page while looking for tutorials. (or I read Win3.1, can't exactly remember)

[MT]

I was actually referring to Iniluki being told he will be learning vb 6 at uni, when it has been 'virtually'* deprecated by vb.net et al.

I have no view on psacal, apart from it being a slightly quaint and obscure language used primarily by guys with beards and physics/engineering students.

As for living on 'Planet Microsoft' thats so amusing i wont even comment ;)

* I say practically, as there is still a huge number of vb developers out there happily making a living writing in vb 6, and there will probably be for quite a few years to come.

[DarkAngel]

lol, we had 2 use it in AS (first year of A Level) its okish, and good for learning as it teaches u the basic of delphi, etc and also it doesnt allow u to be lack, one missed ';' and r fcked, so it teaches u 2 be a good programmer

[BesigedB]

hehe, it gets you into good habits if nothing else

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by AthenaOfDelphi
The best thing any coder can do is to try different languages until they find one (or maybe more) they are happy with

There's still no excuse for ADA

[meglamaniac]

I get thrown straight off the deep end at my uni (currently doing C and 8086 asm), which imo is a good thing - they ain't gonna lead you through it in baby steps in "the real world" and this encourages us to actually pull our asses off the ground and have a serious think about how the languages work - in our first lab practical we had an hour to debug a fairly simple asm proggy in which the lecturer had put both syntax and symantec errors, and get it to assemble and run. That might sound quite simple, but bear in mind the only experience I'd ever had with asm was from a web tutorial a few years ago, and most of the group had never seen it in thier life until that point. At least in asm there's not really any such thing as "bad habits" style wise, since the language itself is very inflexible and every command is in exactly the same format (with the exception of MUL that I can remember).
I'm starting to wish I bothered to remember how to do "old-style" addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (you know - with all the lines and everything) since in our 8086 exam we will be expected to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide binary numbers, and how to add and subtract hex numbers without the use of a calculator.
On top of that, one of our lectureres "accidentally" set us five chapters of Michael Thorne's Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming to read (well over 100 pages) plus various exercises in the book in the first week, and then had a good chortle at us today because apparently he'd told us all that it was for next week (funny how a group of 100 or so students all managed to miss that one). Git.

[wakey]

As others have said its not a great launguage if you actually want to produce useful programs but as a first step into programming you cant fault it. I really cant think of another launguage which really lends itself as a first language to learn the basic programming concepts as well as Pascal.

I know that the small group of us who had done A-Level computing and thus had had two years of Pascal programming found it much easier going into C in yr 1 and expanding it to C++ in yr2 than those who had gone the BASIC route, in fact many of those who had never touched a programming launguage took to C better than those who had gone through the BASIC route

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by wakey
As others have said its not a great launguage if you actually want to produce useful programs but as a first step into programming you cant fault it. I really cant think of another launguage which really lends itself as a first language to learn the basic programming concepts as well as Pascal.

I know that the small group of us who had done A-Level computing and thus had had two years of Pascal programming found it much easier going into C in yr 1 and expanding it to C++ in yr2 than those who had gone the BASIC route, in fact many of those who had never touched a programming launguage took to C better than those who had gone through the BASIC route

10 cls
20 input a$
30 print "Hello ",a$
31 for a=1 to 10000
32 next a
40 goto 10

Subroutines? SUBROUTINES? We don't need no stinkin' subroutines, we got GOTO!

[Nodrog]

Originally posted by meglamaniac
I'm starting to wish I bothered to remember how to do "old-style" addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (you know - with all the lines and everything)

Im curious, what exactly is 'new style' addition and subtraction?

[wakey]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk

10 cls
20 input a$
30 print "Hello ",a$
31 for a=1 to 10000
32 next a
40 goto 10

Subroutines? SUBROUTINES? We don't need no stinkin' subroutines, we got GOTO!

Most languages have GOTO doesnt mean its a good command and should be used. As a general rule of thumb GOTO's shouldnt be used and its use is frowned upon in things like the ANSI standards ect

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by wakey


Most languages have GOTO doesnt mean its a good command and should be used. As a general rule of thumb GOTO's shouldnt be used and its use is frowned upon in things like the ANSI standards ect

Hmmm...I'll make sure I use sarcasm tags next time

[meglamaniac]

Originally posted by Nodrog
Im curious, what exactly is 'new style' addition and subtraction?

The nice flash calculator with the ability to convert between dec,hex,and bin that is sitting on my desk and will not be getting much use at this rate.

[wakey]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk

Hmmm...I'll make sure I use sarcasm tags next time

Yeah would be a good idea....saracsms hard to pick up in the written word

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by wakey


Yeah would be a good idea....saracsms hard to pick up in the written word

I even have a copy of "GOTO Considered Harmful" somewhere...

[Nodrog]

Real men used GOSUB.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by Nodrog
Real men used GOSUB.

Another blast from the past \o/

Real Programmers aren't scared of GOTOs... but they really prefer branches to absolute locations.

OR

Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal

Heading way back into internet history now. Anyone for DEC-Wars? hehehe

Gayle
xXx
P.S. If you're into techie humour the links might prove amusing

[Joop]

Great, you made me feel old again...

I loved these stories...

[MrLobster]

Oh i remember the days when i started to code in Turbo Pascal 7, it was the best tim eof my life, then i moved to Delphi which keeps me going in the windows way.

Learn everything you can about every language, you need diff lans for diff things.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally posted by MrLobster
Learn everything you can about every language, you need diff lans for diff things.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANOUNCEMENT PUIBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

No matter what you hear, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT learn ADA

[TheShadow]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk

PUBLIC SERVICE ANOUNCEMENT PUIBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

No matter what you hear, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT learn ADA

What if it gets the job done or is that a contradiction?

[Gayle29uk]

It was designed to US military spec. It's physically impossible to get the job done using it

Actually, that's not true. It IS possible to get the job done but it will take 10 times the budgeted time, 20 times the budgeted money, and still never work unless the wind is blowing from the East and it's the 3rd Friday in July.

[TheShadow]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
Actually, that's not true. It IS possible to get the job done but it will take 10 times the budgeted time, 20 times the budgeted money, and still never work unless the wind is blowing from the East and it's the 3rd Friday in July.

IOW, is used by any government agency

[wakey]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk

PUBLIC SERVICE ANOUNCEMENT PUIBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

No matter what you hear, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT learn ADA

Actually ada isnt that bad...certainly oen of the better launguages we have been intriducded to this semester at uni (others being ML and PROLOG - oh why cant i go back to the first two years where we were doing C and C++ )

[Gayle29uk]

Something being good compared to PROLOG isn't really much of a recommendation though

[raffe]

TP := good

[Miserableman]

Pascal < Ada

(although as Gayle says the idea that things actually compile in Ada is a myth)

As people have said before, Java is a better language to learn the basics in. If you're not doing OO, then jump straight into C.