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From: bob@hcrvax.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ALICE interactive programming environment for ST
Message-ID: <2647@hcrvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Dec-86 10:02:37 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvax.2647
Posted: Fri Dec 19 10:02:37 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Dec-86 04:09:02 EST
References:  <715@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: bob@hcrvax.UUCP (Bob Kyryliuk)
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 54

In article <715@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>In article  rs4u#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Richard Siegel) writes:
>>
>>Sounds nice, but how fast is the compiler?
>
>Sorry about the confusion.  Alice does not contain a compiler.  It is
>a programming environment with an interpreter.  While the interpreter
>is naturally slower at running programs, the idea is that you develop
>and test with the interpreter, then pick 'compile' off the menu and it
>calls your Pascal compiler on your program.

Since the ISO/ANSI Pascal Standards (as well as Jensen & Wirth) leave
a number of fundamental items to be incorporated as extensions, and
since many current compilers and interpreters implement these
extensions in different ways I have a question on the practicality
of the above suggestion.

Does the use of the ALICE environment require the programmer to
"port" his programs (from ALICE to the compiler he is really going
to use to run his application) every time he wants to test his
application on his compiler, and then "re-port" his program back
(from his compiler's syntax to ALICE) every time he wants to do
"development"?

> ALICE's Pascal language includes all applicable extensions of Turbo Pascal.
> Many Turbo Pascal programs can be moved over to the ST easily.  ALICE can
> also be used in conjunction with Pascal compilers like OSS Pascal.

If you had a Turbo Pascal Compiler and ALICE on the same machine,
incompatible interpreters and compilers would not be a problem since
ALICE is claimed to have the Turbo Pascal extensions (plus perhaps
others).  However, the most common pascal compiler for the ST
appears to be OSS Pascal (correct me if I'm wrong), which has a
different set of extensions from Turbo Pascal. I would assume that
Brad's mention of using ALICE "in conjunction" with OSS Pascal to
mean that there is compatibility only as far as perhaps standard
Pascal, which has numerous deficiencies as mentioned earlier.

This would seem to leave you in a bind of some sort until ALICE grew
OSS Pascal extensions, or Turbo Pascal became available on the ST.

>You don't need a compiler for many programs.

Although in an educational environment, an interpreter may be good
enough for student programming, in the commercial world of hundred
thousand line applications, the bottom line is execution performance
and a compiler is often essential.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bob Kyryliuk
Software Products Manager
HCR Corporation
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