Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!endor!singer
From: singer@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Easy to Learn Mac Programming Environment
Message-ID: <4685@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 31 May 88 12:31:34 GMT
References: <8805240408.AA01675@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <2843@polyslo.UUCP> <4200@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU> <2948@polyslo.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: singer@endor.UUCP (Rich Siegel)
Organization: Symantec/THINK Technologies, Bedford, MA
Lines: 45

In article <2948@polyslo.UUCP> dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes:
>   What about Macintosh Pascal?  Or V.I.P.?  There are other alternatives.

	Macintosh Pascal is not an alternative. Because there's no real runtime
system, you'd have to distribute source to whatever you write. If you're
going to get Mac Pascal, you might as well get Lightspeed Pascal, which
is nearly identical from the programmer's point of view, and offers
all of the advantages inherent to a compiled language.

>>the modern basics do allow for sufficient structure and breaking
>>up of source into separate files.

	This is sort of the argument used to justify why Pascal can be used
for serious work. Standard Pascal is nearly useless, because it doesn't provide
for handy things like separate compilation (the UNIT construct)), among other
thinks. It's only until Pascal is extended all to hell that it can be used 
for anything.

	And so it is with BASIC. To use the Mac Toolbox from BASIC, you
need special keywords (as in MS-BASIC)). This is even worse, because the
language implementor is forced to add what really should be subroutine
calls (which BASIC has no cleean mechanism for anyway) at the compiler
level.

	(I am a Pascal programmer, by the way)

>>allows non-programmers to solve simple problems, Basic is a good
>>choice of language for _real_ programmers interested in creating
>>a small to mid-size application of near-commercial quality.  And
>>it doesn't require any study of Inside Mac.

	Pascal allows programmers to solve simple problems as well. Or 
C. Or Fortran. Or APL. Or SNOBOL. It simply a question of how thoroughly
you're willing to abstract your data (as previously) described. The
more thoroughly a language allows you to exercise your data abstractions,
the more useful it is for solving the simple problems.

	I'd really hate to try and rewrite the 20,000 lines of Pascal code
in my current project in BASIC. 


		--Rich

Rich Siegel
THINK Technologies