Pascal Users

[trekiej]

Hello.
Are there any Pascal programmers here?
If so, could you tell me the pros and cons of this language?
Thanks.
I need the moderator to delete the other Pascal User thread.
Thanks.

[guest11527]

Hello.
Are there any Pascal programmers here?
If so, could you tell me the pros and cons of this language?
Thanks.
I need the moderator to delete the other Pascal User thread.
Thanks.

I used the PCQ compiler on the Amiga for quite some time and did some Pascal here and then (also see Gfx4PCQ, on Aminet, which is a nice graphic support library for PCQ).  Well, Pascal was designed as a teaching language, allowing a single-pass compiler, that grew larger and more successful than its inventor originally intended (Wirth). Interestingly, his languages that tried to connect to this success and tried to provide functions for more professional programming were much less successful (Modula, Oberon).  The good part is: It is a very clean, very strict, and very static language. In a sense, it is a very "German" language (sorry, Wirth is swiss, but I guess you get the idea), compared to the very pragmatic "American" language "C".  If something is against the Pascal design, you cannot do it in Pascal. If something is against the C design, there is always a way to do what you want, even though it looks dirty and becomes a mess. It's much easier to create a mess in C than it is in Pascal, but it's much easier to get something done in C "quick and dirty" compared to Pascal.  It is, in its design, a bit outdated for today's requirements, some of which were addressed by later language extensions. For example, the original Pascal had no "include" support (TurboPascal added this, and it is a very standard extension), had no String support (only static "Array of Character", though String is a very popular extension offered by many if not all implementations) and no modulo support, and no object orientation (Delphi added this).  It is a nice tool for learning structured programming, but probably run out of fashion as it lacks some important modern features. Object orientation is closer to state of the art today, and this is why today python or java is tought instead. Nevertheless, Pascal was a milestone in language design.

[trekiej]

Thanks, that was real good reply.
I am not for sure why I am interested in this language.
I did buy Turbo Pascal for dos from a community college a long time ago for a good price.
I wish I knew where to take this.

[ChuckT]

Hello.
Are there any Pascal programmers here?
If so, could you tell me the pros and cons of this language?
Thanks.
I need the moderator to delete the other Pascal User thread.
Thanks.

I took Pascal in college many moons ago and they used Turbo Pascal on the IBM compatible.

If you are a person who loses their train of thought, it might not be for you.  The reason why is that you have to first declare your variables before you use them.  And you have to know what kind of variable it is so if you change your variable in the course of programming from integer to string, you have to change your variable where you declared them which means you have to leave where you are in the program (losing your spot in line and finding it again) and cursor up to the top of the program.  Remember, it is easy to get lost in a long program because there are no line numbers...  And I spent some time getting lost in a three page program with no line numbers.

There are no line numbers.  You have to practice writing loops.  You have to get away from writing spaghetti code with Gosub and Return.

There is a command that has to do with Functions and it took a book to help me learn it because the teacher was bad at explaining it.

Turbo Pascal also had a bug or two where I had to tell the program to end twice because it didn't count the first end.

I wasted a few minutes compiling my program and figuring out the bugs in my code.

I'm not sure why they taught me to use it in college because no one uses it.

[danbeaver]

Have you looked into PureBasic for the Amiga?  It is a follow up to TrueBasic and free.

[trekiej]

I was looking at FreeBasic, but there is no Amiga or Aros version.
I have seen Pure Basic and would like to buy a license and also use the free one.
I think Hollywood or Amos is ideal but still want to research this more.

[danbeaver]

You can no longer buy a license for PureBasic, they made it free

[trekiej]

Begin Chuckle
79 euros does not look to free to me. It's PureBasic not FreeBasic.
End Chuckle

[trekiej]

I see a ban in my future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lULXvuuy7W8
[youtube]lULXvuuy7W8[/youtube]

[danbeaver]

Begin Chuckle
79 euros does not look to free to me. It's PureBasic not FreeBasic.
End Chuckle

Well when I read their web site, it says 79 EUR if you want all four (4) versions (Amiga, Linux   Windows and MacOS X), but  if you just want the Amiga version 4.00 from http://www.purebasic.com/download.php  I'm pretty sure that the text copied below says the "full version" is OpenSource and only the documentation runs all the way up to 2.90 EUR for the German catalog which I don't need, the English documentation is "free;" while that may seem like 79 EUR to you, it is near to free as Open Source gets.  But you know how people lie on the internet, they could just be "pulling my leg."  

AmigaOS
   
       Download the full version of PureBasic 4.00 (OpenSource):
   
               PureBasic 4.00.lzx
   
       Catalog files availables (Including documentation):
   
               French catalog for purebasic 1.50
               German catalog for purebasic 2.90
               Russian catalog for purebasic 1.50

[danbeaver]

Oh,  since I am a registered user (from years ago when I paid 24 EUR for the Amiga 3.2 version), here is what one can download:

[Chain|Q]

@trekiej and @thread:
Free Pascal Compiler exists for MorphOS, AROS and Amiga/68k. It's open source and free. The classic Amiga version supports the 68020, with optional 68881 FPU (or using a software float library). 68000 support is experimental. It's possible to use most platform-independent high level Pascal language and runtime library elements on Amiga, like lists, hashtables, reference counted strings, and much more. There's also support for a number of Amiga .libraries directly. (It's trivial to convert a C header to a Pascal one anytime, to add more.)

Beside the command line compiler, the Free Pascal IDE is working on all supported platforms, including classic Amiga. On MorphOS, the included programmer's editor Scribble includes Pascal syntax highlighting support out-of-box. The FPC AROS support is slightly more advanced and includes fpGUI and LCL (Lazarus Component Library) support as well, thanks to the work of Marcus 'Alb42' Sackrow. It's also easy to use a cross-compiler hosted on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows, targeting the Amiga-like systems.

The upcoming Free Pascal 3.0 stable release will provide official support for the aforementioned Amiga(-like) platforms as well. Meanwhile, experimental nightly SVN builds are available for both 3.0 branch (beta) and 3.1 branch (development/experimental) too on Alb42's site.

[yssing]

I learned programming in Turbo Pascal in the 90s, and for the past 6 months, I have been using Delphi and Free Pascal through Lazarus.

Coming from php, I like Pascal a lot, the strict nature of the language makes it very easy to program, read other peoples code and likewise, have other people read your code.
Free Pascal works really well in WindowsCE environments, which is what I am currently working on (RFID Scanner).
Lazarus is supposed to be a write once compile for many OS's, but it still lacks the proper support for more obscure OS's like amiga, morph, BeOS and so on, though Lazarus comes prepared for the lot, includen CPU varianst, like x86, arm, 68k, ppc, mips and a few others.

Pointers are so much easier in pascal than in C.
OOP in objfpc is also very easy to use, though not as flexible as other OOP languages.

[trekiej]

Thanks to everyone that posted.
I will keep on working with this.

[Nosferax]

I used the PCQ compiler on the Amiga for quite some time and did some Pascal here and then (also see Gfx4PCQ, on Aminet, which is a nice graphic support library for PCQ).  Well, Pascal was designed as a teaching language, allowing a single-pass compiler, that grew larger and more successful than its inventor originally intended (Wirth). Interestingly, his languages that tried to connect to this success and tried to provide functions for more professional programming were much less successful (Modula, Oberon).  The good part is: It is a very clean, very strict, and very static language. In a sense, it is a very "German" language (sorry, Wirth is swiss, but I guess you get the idea), compared to the very pragmatic "American" language "C".  If something is against the Pascal design, you cannot do it in Pascal. If something is against the C design, there is always a way to do what you want, even though it looks dirty and becomes a mess. It's much easier to create a mess in C than it is in Pascal, but it's much easier to get something done in C "quick and dirty" compared to Pascal.  It is, in its design, a bit outdated for today's requirements, some of which were addressed by later language extensions. For example, the original Pascal had no "include" support (TurboPascal added this, and it is a very standard extension), had no String support (only static "Array of Character", though String is a very popular extension offered by many if not all implementations) and no modulo support, and no object orientation (Delphi added this).  It is a nice tool for learning structured programming, but probably run out of fashion as it lacks some important modern features. Object orientation is closer to state of the art today, and this is why today python or java is tought instead. Nevertheless, Pascal was a milestone in language design.

Turbo Pascal 7 added object, not Delphi. Delphi came later.