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