Historical language survey

[Sean Kelly]

Fredrik Olsson wrote:
> Sean Kelly skrev:
>> kris wrote:
> <snip>
>>> Eh? We're talking about the language according the Wirth here (as 
>>> Walter notes vis-a-vis Wirth's book). Somebody here ought to note 
>>> that Pascal was designed *solely* as an educational tool, for 
>>> /teaching structured programming/ ... the syntax and design was never 
>>> intended as a solution for general-purpose systems programming. It's 
>>> silly to compare it to C
>>
>>
>> Yup.  And for that I think it was well-designed.  The syntax is clear 
>> and free of arcane symbology, and irritating enough to use for real 
>> work that students are well inclined to move on when they learn a more 
>> professional language ;-)  The pointer syntax in Pascal drives me 
>> absolutely insane.
>>
> Am I the only one in the world that thinks the pointer syntax in Pascal 
> beats the C and D syntax every time?
> 
> I mean how hard can it be:
> ^foo  == a pointer type, pointing to a foo. foo* works, but * also mul.
> foo^  == Whatever the pointer foo points to. *foo works, same argument.
> @bar  == The pointer of bar. &bar works to, but why reuse & again?

I think the '@' in place of '&' is quote meaningful, but for the rest... 
it just didn't seem intuitive to me.  It's been quite a while, but I 
remember really feeling like I was fighting the language once I got to 
pointers.

> Now original Pascal, or even ANSI Pascal is hideous, that I can agree 
> with. But I also think that turning the blind eye on what has been done 
> with Turbo Pascal and Delphi the last two decades is idiotic. Especially 
> since they have been more or less the de facto standard Pascal. And thus 
> what Pascal should be judged by.

I was referring to original Pascal.  I've used Delphi quite a bit as 
well, and while I'm still not crazy about the updated syntax, it's 
really quite a good system to work with in general.


Sean