You can call me by my name, or you can call me by my value
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[Niklaus Wirth, Inventor of Pascal, Dies At 89 - Slashdot](https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/01/04/0126247/niklaus-wirth-inventor-of-pascal-dies-at-89) :rose:
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" Chuckles the clown
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[Niklaus Wirth, Inventor of Pascal, Dies At 89 - Slashdot](https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/01/04/0126247/niklaus-wirth-inventor-of-pascal-dies-at-89) :rose:
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" Chuckles the clown
I did my final college project using Pascal - very rebellious for that time of COBOL... Simply fascinated me the language :rose:
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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His language provided for my family for over 10 years. I still say := is the superior assignment notation. Thank you Sir and :rose:
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
Agreed. As a trainer for a few years in C and C++, I always stressed that when scanning/reading/writing code you should train yourself to read/think the operator and not the character(s).
int a = 5; // initialize (very important for C++)
a = 5; // assign
a == 5; // compare
a += 5; // accumulate
etcHaving a separate token for assignment operator is much cleaner.
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Agreed. As a trainer for a few years in C and C++, I always stressed that when scanning/reading/writing code you should train yourself to read/think the operator and not the character(s).
int a = 5; // initialize (very important for C++)
a = 5; // assign
a == 5; // compare
a += 5; // accumulate
etcHaving a separate token for assignment operator is much cleaner.
englebart wrote:
you should train yourself to read/think the operator and not the character(s)
Funny analogy: I spent a year as a US high school senior. In Norwegian high school, the physics teacher had stressed that in formulas and equations, we use letter symbols that are not from name of the phenomenon, e.g. 'v' for 'fart' (speed) and 'c' for 'ladning' (charge). Advanced physics requires so much math an so many equations that we must learn to solve as pure math equations with arbitrarily named variables. Being concerned about the physical interpretation while doing the math is disturbing, you do the math better by not worrying about what a squared speed is! This was firmly established in my brain when I came to the US and a physics teacher who strongly stressed that the symbols are mnemonics, to keep you aware of the physical interpretation. You must always use the mnemonic symbols: Kinetic energy E = 1/2 mv^2, half the mass times the velocity squared. A = 1/2 tf^2 is not the kinetic energy, but something completely different! For a few phenomena, I was used to other letters than the ones used in the US physics textbook - I think they might have been mnemonics for Latin words, not English ones. If I happened to use those Latin symbols in my hand-ins, they were corrected by the teacher to the proper English ones. So there are different schools. My preference is like yours: Don't worry about the textual representation, the equation is the same with other letters. The operation/operator is the same whatever it is called, how it is written. At least in an ideal world. There is a problem with symbols that have a well established interpretation that everyone knows, but you insist on using it with a different interpretation. That is the problem with '=': For centuries, the meaning of 'if privilege level = boss, allow entrance' is an interrogation of the privilege level. Then comes C programmers and insist on a different interpretation: The privilege level is set to 'boss', and if the internal representation of 'boss' is zero, entrance is allowed, regardless of who you are. This redefinition of well established interpretation I do not appreciate. Nor do I appreciate having to ask 'if privilege level is is boss, allow entrance'. Why should I have to double the test? There is a well established convention for interrogating the privilege level without repeating the condition! In other words: I prefer Pasca
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englebart wrote:
you should train yourself to read/think the operator and not the character(s)
Funny analogy: I spent a year as a US high school senior. In Norwegian high school, the physics teacher had stressed that in formulas and equations, we use letter symbols that are not from name of the phenomenon, e.g. 'v' for 'fart' (speed) and 'c' for 'ladning' (charge). Advanced physics requires so much math an so many equations that we must learn to solve as pure math equations with arbitrarily named variables. Being concerned about the physical interpretation while doing the math is disturbing, you do the math better by not worrying about what a squared speed is! This was firmly established in my brain when I came to the US and a physics teacher who strongly stressed that the symbols are mnemonics, to keep you aware of the physical interpretation. You must always use the mnemonic symbols: Kinetic energy E = 1/2 mv^2, half the mass times the velocity squared. A = 1/2 tf^2 is not the kinetic energy, but something completely different! For a few phenomena, I was used to other letters than the ones used in the US physics textbook - I think they might have been mnemonics for Latin words, not English ones. If I happened to use those Latin symbols in my hand-ins, they were corrected by the teacher to the proper English ones. So there are different schools. My preference is like yours: Don't worry about the textual representation, the equation is the same with other letters. The operation/operator is the same whatever it is called, how it is written. At least in an ideal world. There is a problem with symbols that have a well established interpretation that everyone knows, but you insist on using it with a different interpretation. That is the problem with '=': For centuries, the meaning of 'if privilege level = boss, allow entrance' is an interrogation of the privilege level. Then comes C programmers and insist on a different interpretation: The privilege level is set to 'boss', and if the internal representation of 'boss' is zero, entrance is allowed, regardless of who you are. This redefinition of well established interpretation I do not appreciate. Nor do I appreciate having to ask 'if privilege level is is boss, allow entrance'. Why should I have to double the test? There is a well established convention for interrogating the privilege level without repeating the condition! In other words: I prefer Pasca
The proprietary language in which I worked for much of my career used
->, which was dubbed "gazinta" (goes into). This allowed constructs such asif(function(arguments) -> result = ...)
with
=being the C++ equivalent of==.Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. -
I did my final college project using Pascal - very rebellious for that time of COBOL... Simply fascinated me the language :rose:
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
Did my final graduate project in PL/I which at the time was considered IBM's entry to their world. Our professor preferred Pascal and/or Algol 60, which I used frequently, but they were not commercially useful in US at that time, mid to late 70's, so he pushed PL/I. It had all the same concepts and then some as Pascal and Algol. I turned into a full fledged C programmer while using PL/I and COBOL to make money. Fortran served me well in the tech world of engineering. Wrote some pretty aggressive code using Fortran. Now I use only C, but I am retired. C++ not so much.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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[Niklaus Wirth, Inventor of Pascal, Dies At 89 - Slashdot](https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/01/04/0126247/niklaus-wirth-inventor-of-pascal-dies-at-89) :rose:
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" Chuckles the clown
RIP, Niklaus, and thank you for your invention of Pascal. Without any competition, Pascal is, by far, the best language I have used in the almost 50 years since I started programming. The C family has nothing to offer that can compare to the functionality and readability of Pascal.
Will Rogers never met me.
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The proprietary language in which I worked for much of my career used
->, which was dubbed "gazinta" (goes into). This allowed constructs such asif(function(arguments) -> result = ...)
with
=being the C++ equivalent of==.Robust Services Core | Software Techniques for Lemmings | Articles
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.Greg Utas wrote:
"gazinta" (goes into)
But that's division. e.g. three gazinta twelve four times.
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RIP, Niklaus, and thank you for your invention of Pascal. Without any competition, Pascal is, by far, the best language I have used in the almost 50 years since I started programming. The C family has nothing to offer that can compare to the functionality and readability of Pascal.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
functionality and readability
Are frequently at odds with other things which C is really good at. I haven't used Pascal since college, it never paid the bills.
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Roger Wright wrote:
functionality and readability
Are frequently at odds with other things which C is really good at. I haven't used Pascal since college, it never paid the bills.
That certainly true; it never caught on. I used it for electronics testing in Aerospace, where maintainability is paramount, and there is no better language for readability. Alas, it lacked a lot of the bare metal programming capability that the C family brought to the table, and that was its doom, I suspect.
Will Rogers never met me.
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That certainly true; it never caught on. I used it for electronics testing in Aerospace, where maintainability is paramount, and there is no better language for readability. Alas, it lacked a lot of the bare metal programming capability that the C family brought to the table, and that was its doom, I suspect.
Will Rogers never met me.
And the 255-character string limit?
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And the 255-character string limit?
That was never a problem when I was actively programming, and I believe that was extended as part of their adoption of OOP with version 5.5+. Back in those days, testing was performed by setting up instruments with string commands, then triggering them with events generated by the test code. Reports were collected by reading instrument registers, so string length was never an issue. I was happy with the introduction of named Calls at the time, as everything the company I worked for used procedure calls that had numbers, and the only way to find out how to call them with parameters was to beg the Systems Programming group for documentation on a particular Call. Strange times, and everything was proprietary and dynamic; it wasn't unusual to use three programming languages on one Project. We are so very much better off today!
Will Rogers never met me.
