🚀 go-pugleaf

spertus@mills.edu wrote:

>The ACM-Mills Conference on Pioneering Women in Computing will take
>place at Mills College in Oakland, California, on Sunday, May 7.
>Speakers include two of the original ENIAC programmers, Jean Bartik and
>Kay Mauchly Antonelli; language pioneer Jean Sammet; NASA scientist
>Annie Easley;community networking leader Antonia Stone; and author Betty
>Alexandra Toole, who will be speaking on Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace.
>There is no charge to attend, although pre-registration is required.
>For more information, see "http://tap.mills.edu/pioneers".  For those
>who cannot attend, we will be making video available afterwards.

     You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!  In two weeks, I'll be
giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
(2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>
>      You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!  In two weeks, I'll be
> giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
> (2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).

That was a speaker's list.  Sadly, Admiral Hopper died a few years ago.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

In article <1bn1m5ysz6.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
   Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>>
>>      You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!  In two weeks, I'll be
>> giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
>> (2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).
>
>That was a speaker's list.  Sadly, Admiral Hopper died a few years ago.

I was fortunate enough to hear her speak twice.  I would
have like to have heard the stories she couldn't tell
in public.  She was a hot shit.

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:

>genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>>
>>      You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!  In two weeks, I'll be
>> giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
>> (2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).
>
>That was a speaker's list.  Sadly, Admiral Hopper died a few years ago.

     Oops!  I know Adm. Hopper died in '92, but I saw where one
speaker was speaking of two of the pioneers.  Maybe she should speak
about Adm. Hopper, too.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

All these women pioneered nothing.

No change there then.

--
J. G. Llasa

"Evolutionary quantum leaps have always occurred when we have been faced
with possible extinction. Now at such a threshold, we are discovering the
neurological tools that medicine peoples and visionaries have mastered so
elegantly - and used to quantum leap into the future." - Alberto Villoldo

<spertus@mills.edu> wrote in message news:8eld9o$ka3$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> The ACM-Mills Conference on Pioneering Women in Computing will take
> place at Mills College in Oakland, California, on Sunday, May 7.
> Speakers include two of the original ENIAC programmers, Jean Bartik and
> Kay Mauchly Antonelli; language pioneer Jean Sammet; NASA scientist
> Annie Easley;community networking leader Antonia Stone; and author Betty
> Alexandra Toole, who will be speaking on Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace.
> There is no charge to attend, although pre-registration is required.
> For more information, see "http://tap.mills.edu/pioneers".  For those
> who cannot attend, we will be making video available afterwards.
>
> Ellen Spertus
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.

Given the state of the IT industry before COBOL -- every manufacturer
with their own closed language -- it was arguably a huge step forward.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>
> >She wasn't always a nice person, either.
>
> Sigh!  Why do people have to be _nice_ if they've also
> done some useful stuff.

Why should doing useful stuff be an excuse for being a lousy human
being?  (note:  I hadn't heard the personality comments about her, and
have no idea whether they're true.  But I object to the notion that
being sufficiently successful gives one the right to be a jerk)

--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>,
   Brian Boutel <brian@boutel.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
>jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> In article <1bn1m5ysz6.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
>>    Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>> >genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>> >>
>> >>      You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!
>> >>In two weeks, I'll be
>> >> giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
>> >> (2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).
>> >
>> >That was a speaker's list.  Sadly, Admiral Hopper died a few years ago.
>>
>> I was fortunate enough to hear her speak twice.  I would
>> have like to have heard the stories she couldn't tell
>> in public.  She was a hot shit.
>>
>
>But through her promotion of Cobol arguably did more damage to the IT
>industry than anyone else (except possibly IBM).

The two talks, that I heard her give, didn't sound like she
was promoting anything.  I would have liked to have heard
more about how she dealt with PHBs.  At the time, I was
at my wit's end.  However, I figured if she could do it
with the military PHBs, I certainly could.

>She wasn't always a nice person, either.

Sigh!  Why do people have to be _nice_ if they've also
done some useful stuff.

> When Pascal was fashionable,
>she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
>nasty ad hominem argument. The most damning thing she could say about it
>was to describe the main local proponent as "a Tasmanian Academic", a
>doubly insulting description in that part of the world, suggesting an
>unwordly, impractical man from a no-consequence rural backwater.
>
>She had some remarkable achievements, but please don't beatify her.

Sounds like you did [emoticon who read the word as beat-ifying].
I wasn't making her an idol.  Sheesh!


/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
> In article <1bn1m5ysz6.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
>    Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
> >genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
> >>
> >>      You should add Admiral Hopper to the list!  In two weeks, I'll be
> >> giving a speech in praise of Admiral Hopper at my Toastmasters club
> >> (2861, Salmon Arm, BC, Canada).
> >
> >That was a speaker's list.  Sadly, Admiral Hopper died a few years ago.
>
> I was fortunate enough to hear her speak twice.  I would
> have like to have heard the stories she couldn't tell
> in public.  She was a hot shit.
>

But through her promotion of Cobol arguably did more damage to the IT
industry than anyone else (except possibly IBM).

She wasn't always a nice person, either. When Pascal was fashionable,
she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
nasty ad hominem argument. The most damning thing she could say about it
was to describe the main local proponent as "a Tasmanian Academic", a
doubly insulting description in that part of the world, suggesting an
unwordly, impractical man from a no-consequence rural backwater.

She had some remarkable achievements, but please don't beatify her.

--brian

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:

> Why should doing useful stuff be an excuse for being a lousy human
> being?  (note: I hadn't heard the personality comments about her,
> and have no idea whether they're true.  But I object to the notion
> that being sufficiently successful gives one the right to be a jerk)

Because of the large number of idiots that hassle you and give you
grief while you're trying to get something useful done, and the large
number of other idiots that intentionally try to stop you from getting
something useful done.

-gc

In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>, brian@boutel.co.nz says...
>
>
>
> But through her promotion of Cobol arguably did more damage to the IT
> industry than anyone else (except possibly IBM).

  This is utter nonsense.

> She wasn't always a nice person, either. When Pascal was fashionable,
> she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
> nasty ad hominem argument.

  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.

On Sun, 07 May 2000 18:45:16 GMT, John Englund <je@nowhere.com> wrote:
>In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>, brian@boutel.co.nz says...
>>
>> But through her promotion of Cobol arguably did more damage to the IT
>> industry than anyone else (except possibly IBM).
>
>  This is utter nonsense.

IMHO any broad sweeping statement is suspect.  Anyway It can't be worse
that RPG :-)

>> She wasn't always a nice person, either. When Pascal was fashionable,
>> she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
>> nasty ad hominem argument.
>
>  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
>a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
>at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
>industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.

In its place Pascal is a *very useful* learning tool.  I wouldn't write
any serious programs in it, but that doesn't make it useless.  Many
programmers were introduced to structured programming through Pascal.
Its B&D nature and lack of power are the Right Thing (TM) for an
educational language.

--
dowe						dowe@sierratel.com
---
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.

genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
> >
> >  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
> >a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
> >at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
> >industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.
>
>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
> he skewers Pascal but good.

Having ``taught'' a bunch of people who'd never written a program
before C, you have no idea how much I wish I'd been teaching Pascal.
It's a nearly ideal first language -- small, compact, and covers the
essentials of procedural programming quite well.

Having once written a CT-scan file reader (which involved values
stored in Data General floating point format) in VAX Pascal, you have
no idea how glad I am that I'll never write another program that has
to actually accomplish something in that language.

In other words, it's superb at what it was intended for.  The fact
that it's lousy at anything else can hardly be held against it.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

In article <1bem7emj7h.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
	Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
> jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>>
>> >She wasn't always a nice person, either.
>>
>> Sigh!  Why do people have to be _nice_ if they've also
>> done some useful stuff.
>
> Why should doing useful stuff be an excuse for being a lousy human
> being?  (note:  I hadn't heard the personality comments about her, and
> have no idea whether they're true.  But I object to the notion that
> being sufficiently successful gives one the right to be a jerk)

There's no excuse for being consistantly nasty, but we can all be
a bit of a jerk occasionally.

John Englund <je@nowhere.com> wrote:

>In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>, brian@boutel.co.nz says...
>>
>>
>>
>> But through her promotion of Cobol arguably did more damage to the IT
>> industry than anyone else (except possibly IBM).
>
>  This is utter nonsense.
>
>> She wasn't always a nice person, either. When Pascal was fashionable,
>> she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
>> nasty ad hominem argument.
>
>  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
>a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
>at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
>industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.

     Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
he skewers Pascal but good.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

"J G Llasa" <llasa@plastic.screaming.net> wrote:

>All these women pioneered nothing.

     Ada Lovelace was arguably the world's first programmer.

     I brought up Admiral Hopper as an exemplar.  She came up with the
concept of the compiler and was responsible for much of the basis for
COBOL.

>No change there then.

     I think you've missed something.

[snipped previous]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

Gene Wirchenko (genew@shuswap.net) writes:
>
>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
> he skewers Pascal but good.

  This is rich.  Any ISBNs or URLs ?

In article <1bg0rt900s.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:

>Having ``taught'' a bunch of people who'd never written a program
>before C, you have no idea how much I wish I'd been teaching Pascal.
>It's a nearly ideal first language -- small, compact, and covers the
>essentials of procedural programming quite well.
>
>Having once written a CT-scan file reader (which involved values
>stored in Data General floating point format) in VAX Pascal, you have
>no idea how glad I am that I'll never write another program that has
>to actually accomplish something in that language.
>
>In other words, it's superb at what it was intended for.  The fact
>that it's lousy at anything else can hardly be held against it.

But people persist in using it for "anything else", i.e., not what it was
intended for.

Delphi seems to be popular with some people.  I guess it's the descendant of
Turbo Pascal in some sense.

-- Derek

Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:

>genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>> >
>> >  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
>> >a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
>> >at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
>> >industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.
>>
>>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
>> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
>> he skewers Pascal but good.
>
>Having ``taught'' a bunch of people who'd never written a program
>before C, you have no idea how much I wish I'd been teaching Pascal.
>It's a nearly ideal first language -- small, compact, and covers the
>essentials of procedural programming quite well.

     I tutored one lady in an intro programming course in Pascal.  I
didn't know Pascal itself at the time.  Due to my experience, I was
able to figure out why one program wasn't working right.  A beginner
wouldn't have stood a chance.

>Having once written a CT-scan file reader (which involved values
>stored in Data General floating point format) in VAX Pascal, you have
>no idea how glad I am that I'll never write another program that has
>to actually accomplish something in that language.

     That's about what Brian has to say and does so very thoroughly.

>In other words, it's superb at what it was intended for.  The fact
>that it's lousy at anything else can hardly be held against it.

     The problem with programming languages is that people like to use
them to program.  That's how toy languages escape into the RW.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) wrote:

>Gene Wirchenko (genew@shuswap.net) writes:
>>
>>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
>> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
>> he skewers Pascal but good.
>
>  This is rich.  Any ISBNs or URLs ?

     I just looked it up and it's at
          http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html
Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

dpeschel@eskimo.com (Derek Peschel) writes:
>
> But people persist in using it for "anything else", i.e., not what it was
> intended for.

I hold that against the people doing it, not the language.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

In article <1bem7emj7h.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
   Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>>
>> >She wasn't always a nice person, either.
>>
>> Sigh!  Why do people have to be _nice_ if they've also
>> done some useful stuff.
>
>Why should doing useful stuff be an excuse for being a lousy human
>being?

I didn't mean it that way.  I don't think the two traits have
to be evaluated together for a judgement of production.

> (note:  I hadn't heard the personality comments about her, and
>have no idea whether they're true.

I didn't think it was true.  But I also thought, and tried to
express, that the personality aspect has nothing to do with
production.

> But I object to the notion that
>being sufficiently successful gives one the right to be a jerk)

I didn't say this either.  IME, jerks were not productive since
they spent their time irritating those who were working.

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com> wrote:
> Delphi seems to be popular with some people.  I guess it's the descendant of
> Turbo Pascal in some sense.

  Delphi uses Object Pascal, which was a lat version of Turbo Pascal. It's
a signifigantly extended version of Pascal. (At what point is Pascal no
longer Pascal?) Also, it's competition is primarily VB which is more
annoying.

--
Mike Swaim, Avatar of Chaos: Disclaimer:I sometimes lie.
Home: swaim at nol * net Quote: "Boingie"^4 Y,W&D

On 8 May 2000 06:17:18 GMT, Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com> wrote:
>Delphi seems to be popular with some people.  I guess it's the descendant of
>Turbo Pascal in some sense.

I'm currently doing a medium-sized project in Delphi. It is indeed Turbo
Pascal's descendant. It's also a very nice development environment, and I
doubt I'd be anywhere close to where I am now with the project (nearly
feature-complete) in the two years I've been working on it if I'd used any
other development tool; certainly not any of M$'s tools, due to Delphi's
nicely integrated support for dBASE and Paradox databases, and probably not
with C++ Builder, due to Delphi's nice support for string and currency data
types.

No, this isn't a systems programming job; it's a payroll system, which is
being developed from scratch due to some *highly* unusual requirements.
(This company's chart of accounts is 77,000 long, 95% of which is
payroll-related for 450 employees.) C is singularly unsuited for business
data processing, with its heavy emphasis on strings and money values; a C
program to do this job would have resulted in me spending many hours chasing
pointer bugs.

Pascal has its place, just as C and assembler and FORTRAN and Forth and
other languages. With enough extensions, it's quite usable in its problem
space.

swaim@nol.net wrote:
>
> Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com> wrote:
> > Delphi seems to be popular with some people.  I guess it's the descendant of
> > Turbo Pascal in some sense.
>
>   Delphi uses Object Pascal, which was a lat version of Turbo Pascal. It's
> a signifigantly extended version of Pascal. (At what point is Pascal no
> longer Pascal?) Also, it's competition is primarily VB which is more
> annoying.
>
Okay, I have heard of the Brian Kernighan's paper "Why Pascal Is Not My
Favorite Programming Language".  It seems like there was a BYTE magazine
article on this paper once a long time ago...  Now ISO standard Pascal
has basically *two* different standards...Level 0 Pascal and Level 1
Pascal.  Kernighan's criticism was aimed at Level 0 Pascal.  Level 1
Pascal was much more like Turbo Pascal, with more features that made
it a usable language.

Can anyone post the differences between Level 0 and Level 1 Pascal,
and what features that Turbo Pascal has above Level 1???

--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|     Charles and Francis Richmond     <richmond@plano.net>   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>
> "J G Llasa" <llasa@plastic.screaming.net> wrote:
>
> >All these women pioneered nothing.
>
>      Ada Lovelace was arguably the world's first programmer.

Not even close. The astronomical calculators of the ancients
(Egyptians, Druids, etc) preceeded by many centuries ......

Bill
Tucson

Jay Maynard wrote:
>
> I'm currently doing a medium-sized project in Delphi.
>
> No, this isn't a systems programming job; it's a payroll system,
> which is being developed from scratch due to some *highly* unusual
> requirements. (This company's chart of accounts is 77,000 long, 95%
> of which is payroll-related for 450 employees.)

   One word:  "COBOL".

   In a few more: "The right tool for the job."

   True enough, C isn't the best tool for business-oriented (like
payroll, for instance) applications; it's too simple for the task
(and before somebody takes me to task for that, try programming a
payroll in both C and COBOL and see which makes more sense at the
end of the day).

   Then again, COBOL is not that useful for programming systems in
(although I have seen several good games done in it).

   There is room for more than one programming language on the
planet, you know.  That said, I agree that Pascal is little more
than a "toy" language and that the expenditure in time of under-
graduates learning it would be much better spent elsewhere.

--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com                +---------------------+
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum       | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+

In article <391738EB.A7629A0B@dallas.net>,
Charles Richmond  <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:
>article on this paper once a long time ago...  Now ISO standard Pascal
>has basically *two* different standards...Level 0 Pascal and Level 1
>Pascal.  Kernighan's criticism was aimed at Level 0 Pascal.  Level 1
>Pascal was much more like Turbo Pascal, with more features that made
>it a usable language.

Hmmm.... I've always grouped Pascal into:

	Pascal
and
	Pascal with proprietary stuff bolted onto it to make it useable.

The former being basically a toy, useful for teaching programming
concepts and precicely nothing else, and the latter being the likes
of Turbo Pascal, VAX Pascal and friends.

Mainly, the extensions included the ability to call external modules
and talk to the file system in some useful manner.  Character string
handling, or at least the primitives to manage variable length arrays
was a common bolt-on too.

I don't recall any enhanced standard, although one may have come too
late to save the language.

-- don

In article <1bg0rtgeqs.fsf@viper.cs.nmsu.edu>,
   Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:
>dpeschel@eskimo.com (Derek Peschel) writes:
>>
>> But people persist in using it for "anything else",
>>i.e., not what it was intended for.
>
>I hold that against the people doing it, not the language.

But if it's the only language they know, a lot of pain
get spread around :-).  I remember one new hire getting
an assignment to do something...can't recall functional
details at the moment.  He implemented the stuff in PASCAL.
Unfortunately, we were not known for having a reliable
compiler.  Thus, after this newbie left, the poor jerk
who got handed the procedure had to hand hold the damn
thing and it was run often.  Somebody, somewhere finally
got fed up and zipped out a batch file that did the same
thing.  The guy who wrote the PASCAL program also had
no idea what I/O meant.

/BAH


Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

In article <39176D37.4A9E40E4@prescienttech.com>,
   "Carl R. Friend" <carl.friend@prescienttech.com> wrote:
>Jay Maynard wrote:
>>
>> I'm currently doing a medium-sized project in Delphi.
>>
>> No, this isn't a systems programming job; it's a payroll system,
>> which is being developed from scratch due to some *highly* unusual
>> requirements. (This company's chart of accounts is 77,000 long, 95%
>> of which is payroll-related for 450 employees.)
>
>   One word:  "COBOL".
>
>   In a few more: "The right tool for the job."

Right!!!!
<snip>

/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> writes:

> swaim@nol.net wrote:
> >
> > Derek Peschel <dpeschel@eskimo.com> wrote:
> > > Delphi seems to be popular with some people.  I guess it's the descendant of
> > > Turbo Pascal in some sense.
> >
> >   Delphi uses Object Pascal, which was a lat version of Turbo Pascal. It's
> > a signifigantly extended version of Pascal. (At what point is Pascal no
> > longer Pascal?) Also, it's competition is primarily VB which is more
> > annoying.
> >
> Okay, I have heard of the Brian Kernighan's paper "Why Pascal Is Not My
> Favorite Programming Language".  It seems like there was a BYTE magazine
> article on this paper once a long time ago...  Now ISO standard Pascal
> has basically *two* different standards...Level 0 Pascal and Level 1
> Pascal.  Kernighan's criticism was aimed at Level 0 Pascal.  Level 1
> Pascal was much more like Turbo Pascal, with more features that made
> it a usable language.
>
> Can anyone post the differences between Level 0 and Level 1 Pascal,
> and what features that Turbo Pascal has above Level 1???
>

I never played with a level 1 system (my BBC micro only had level 0,
you needed I think the second processor (or maybe a Master) to get it
to run at level 1.  Level 1 added variable-length arrays to the
language.  This feature is not only very handy, it's also, how shall I
put it mildly, still *!@#ing missing from C.  I have no idea how this
was supposed to interact with separate compilation (I don't think
Pascal ever had this).

Also, IIRC level 1 still didn't add any I/O to the language.

--
Ariel Scolnicov

Simo Tuominen wrote:

> >>Gene Wirchenko (genew@shuswap.net) writes:
> >>>
> >>>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
> >>> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
> >>> he skewers Pascal but good.
>
> It seems the language is even worse than I had imagined, which is
> probably attributable to my (lack of) experience trying to write
> anything useful using it.

Come now.  You can't take a few things which are bad (and make the original
language unusable for real programming :-( and judge the whole language.
C is lousy for teaching Computer Science.  Pascal->Modula->Ada are good
for teaching Computer Science.  IMHO, of course :-)

Jim
Hi Joe :-)

On 7 May 2000 19:58:15 -0700, dowe@localhost.localdomain (Dowe Keller)
wrote:

>On Sun, 07 May 2000 18:45:16 GMT, John Englund <je@nowhere.com> wrote:
>>In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>, brian@boutel.co.nz says...

[Grace Hopper]
>>> She wasn't always a nice person, either. When Pascal was fashionable,
>>> she attempted, while giving a talk in Australia, to dismiss it with a
>>> nasty ad hominem argument.
>>
>>  And you think that Pascal has done much in the computer industry?  For
>>a few (very) short years in the mid 80's, Turbo Pascal made the language
>>at least semi-usable, but other than that it has done nothing for the
>>industry .. it was merely a "toy" learning tool for universities.
>
>In its place Pascal is a *very useful* learning tool.  I wouldn't write
>any serious programs in it, but that doesn't make it useless.  Many
>programmers were introduced to structured programming through Pascal.

Then there are the perv^Hsons who hate Pascal, but started to program
structurally even in Basic, because it's simply easier to understand
and more maintainable than spaghetti code.

>Its B&D nature and lack of power are the Right Thing (TM) for an
>educational language.

But not to the amount Pascal does it. It's so bad that you spend more
time fighting the language than doing anything productive, even with
small programs. That's the one thing that makes me choose C over
Pascal any day. Pascal may be good for weeding out aspiring
programmers, but I'm not sure if the weeded out ones are the ones that
*should* be. Pascal's horrible enough to put you off programming.

On Mon, 08 May 2000 06:21:58 GMT, genew@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko)
wrote:

>ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) wrote:
>
>>Gene Wirchenko (genew@shuswap.net) writes:
>>>
>>>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
>>> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
>>> he skewers Pascal but good.
>>
>>  This is rich.  Any ISBNs or URLs ?
>
>     I just looked it up and it's at
>          http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html

I had problems with that, and went instead to
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/pascal.html
It seems the language is even worse than I had imagined, which is
probably attributable to my (lack of) experience trying to write
anything useful using it.

On Sun, 07 May 00 10:27:57 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

>In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>,
>   Brian Boutel <brian@boutel.co.nz> wrote:

>>She had some remarkable achievements, but please don't beatify her.
>
>Sounds like you did [emoticon who read the word as beat-ifying].

I read that as beat-ify, because that's what he wrote. AFAIK it's
"beautify". If it isn't, well, that one's more mark against English.

On Sun, 7 May 2000 09:53:54 -0000, "J G Llasa"
<llasa@plastic.screaming.net> wrote:

><spertus@mills.edu> wrote in message news:8eld9o$ka3$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
>> The ACM-Mills Conference on Pioneering Women in Computing will take
>> place at Mills College in Oakland, California, on Sunday, May 7.
>> Speakers include two of the original ENIAC programmers, Jean Bartik and
>> Kay Mauchly Antonelli; language pioneer Jean Sammet; NASA scientist
>> Annie Easley;community networking leader Antonia Stone; and author Betty
>> Alexandra Toole, who will be speaking on Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace.
[snip]

>All these women pioneered nothing.

What makes you say that? Usually there isn't just one pioneer, but a
group.

BTW: -1e6 points for quoting the whole post, another for having a
broken sig delimiter, yet another for having a too long sig, and a
fourth for putting your own text before the quote (this one I can
skip, if you have used computers since the days of 110 bps modems;
have you? OTOH, you still have to read the text you're quoting, so
even that excuse's a bit lame). Do that again and face the wrath of my
killfile. <g>

In article <3916aa5d.9016500@localhost>,
Simo Tuominen <simotit@evitech.fi> wrote:
>On Sun, 07 May 00 10:27:57 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
>>In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>,
>>   Brian Boutel <brian@boutel.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>>She had some remarkable achievements, but please don't beatify her.
>>
>>Sounds like you did [emoticon who read the word as beat-ifying].
>
>I read that as beat-ify, because that's what he wrote. AFAIK it's
>"beautify". If it isn't, well, that one's more mark against English.

I think Brian did meant "beatify", which (I think) means to make someone a
saint.  "Beautify" means to make beautiful.

Incidentally, it's pronounced be-at'-if-y.  Four syllables.

--
Ben Harris
Unix Support, University of Cambridge Computing Service.
  If I wanted to speak for the University, I'd be in ucam.comp-serv.announce.

On Mon, 08 May 2000 21:43:20 -0400, Carl R. Friend
<carl.friend@prescienttech.com> wrote:
>   One word:  "COBOL".
>   In a few more: "The right tool for the job."

Is there a Visual Cobol?
You know, one that lets you design screens and hook code to specific events
wihtout having to write mountains of boilerplate message handlers and the
like?

I'd be even less done with the system now than if I'd used C++ Builder if
I'd had to code all that crap by hand. I'd probably only be delivering the
first major module right about now, instead of being nearly done.

>   There is room for more than one programming language on the
>planet, you know.

Absolutely. I do believe in the right language for the job, be that language
C, assembler, COBOL, Perl, or even BASIC (which is unsurpassed for
quick-and-dirty knockoffs on micros). There is a place for a suitably
extended Pascal in there, too.

>  That said, I agree that Pascal is little more
>than a "toy" language and that the expenditure in time of under-
>graduates learning it would be much better spent elsewhere.

I, too, have tutored an undergrad in a Pascal class, and saw firsthand what
problems it causes. I don't have a better answer, though, because other
languages have their own sets of problems when used as a first language.
Some schools are going to Java for an introductory language, but I have no
experience with it, and so can't comment on its suitability.

In article <slrn8hgdf1.e96.jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx>, jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:

> On Mon, 08 May 2000 21:43:20 -0400, Carl R. Friend
> <carl.friend@prescienttech.com> wrote:

> >   One word:  "COBOL".
> >   In a few more: "The right tool for the job."

> Is there a Visual Cobol?
> You know, one that lets you design screens and hook code to specific events
> wihtout having to write mountains of boilerplate message handlers and the
> like?

Of course.  We've had such a product (currently called "NetExpress")
for years.  GUI screen-painting, code-generating development system;
IDE; all that nonsense.  I understand some of our competitors
(Fujitsu, etc.) have similar offerings, but I don't work on the COBOL
side of the house, so I couldn't say for certain.

Given the still-huge COBOL market, it would be rather surprising if
this sort of thing wasn't available.


--
Michael Wojcik          	        michael.wojcik@merant.com
AAI Development, MERANT                 (block capitals are a company mandate)
Department of English, Miami University

Thus, the black lie, issuing from his base throat, becomes a boomerang to
his hand, and he is hoist by his own petard, and finds himself a marked man.
   -- attributed to a "small-town newspaper editor in Wisconsin"

Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu> writes:
>
> Come now.  You can't take a few things which are bad (and make the original
> language unusable for real programming :-( and judge the whole language.
> C is lousy for teaching Computer Science.  Pascal->Modula->Ada are good
> for teaching Computer Science.  IMHO, of course :-)
>
Ada?  Get a stake!

> Jim
> Hi Joe :-)

Hi -- good to hear from you!
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
VL 2000 Homepage:  http://www.cs.orst.edu/~burnett/vl2000/

In article <slrn8hgdf1.e96.jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx>,
	jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:
> Is there a Visual Cobol?
> You know, one that lets you design screens and hook code to specific events
> wihtout having to write mountains of boilerplate message handlers and the
> like?

I believe that there were various home-grown "visual" COBOL systems; AIUI
Philips' internally-written SCRNS program on its 3090 MVS boxes was one
such example.  And, yes, there really is a GUI-driven version of COBOL, an
ex-colleague of mine works on it.

Chris.

In article <391738EB.A7629A0B@dallas.net>,
   Charles Richmond <richmond@dallas.net> wrote:
> Pascal.  Kernighan's criticism was aimed at Level 0 Pascal.  Level 1
> Pascal was much more like Turbo Pascal, with more features that made
> it a usable language.

I am not certain, but I think that the only extra feature level 1
ISO Pascal added was the conformant array, which provided a
general array passing mechanism for procedures and functions. I
think the standardisation committee decided that the first Pascal
standard would keep to the Jensen and Wirth version of the
language. There is a later Pascal standard, ISO 10206 I think,
that adds a lot of features such as separate compilation, string
handling and a proper string type, complex numbers and so forth.
The standard came out in about 1990. I suspect that that was
probably a bit late in the life of the language for it to have
much impact.

Dave Daniels.

--
ANTISPAM: Please note that the email address above is false. My
correct address is:

    dave_daniels<at>argonet<dot>co<dot>uk

Please replace the <at> and <dot>s with @ and . respectively when
replying - Thanks!

In article <3916a13b.6677755@localhost>,
   Simo Tuominen <simotit@evitech.fi> wrote:
> Pascal any day. Pascal may be good for weeding out aspiring
> programmers, but I'm not sure if the weeded out ones are the ones that
> *should* be. Pascal's horrible enough to put you off programming.

It is only in the past year or so that I have managed to stop
trying to write Pascal when I write in C. I learnt Pascal the
best part of twenty years ago, long before I started programming
in C. I hated C after the elegant simplicity of Pascal but my
views have changed now.

Dave Daniels

--
ANTISPAM: Please note that the email address above is false. My
correct address is:

    dave_daniels<at>argonet<dot>co<dot>uk

Please replace the <at> and <dot>s with @ and . respectively when
replying - Thanks!

In article <3916aa5d.9016500@localhost>, simotit@evitech.fi says...
> On Sun, 07 May 00 10:27:57 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
>
> >In article <3914E9D6.CAE33C3A@boutel.co.nz>,
> >   Brian Boutel <brian@boutel.co.nz> wrote:
>
> >>She had some remarkable achievements, but please don't beatify her.
> >
> >Sounds like you did [emoticon who read the word as beat-ifying].
>
> I read that as beat-ify, because that's what he wrote. AFAIK it's
> "beautify". If it isn't, well, that one's more mark against English.
>
"Beatify" is the first step towards becoming a saint, i.e. when the Pope
beatifies someone (according to my beatup old dictionary). There's also
"beatific", sounds like a great teenage slang word. Wonder why that never
broke through.

That was all I had to say, but I have to add some extra text or my stupid
news server won't post this. It seems I have to post at least as much
new text as quoted material. Don't want to delete any more quotes, that
would remove the context and besides I'm being stubborn this time. Wow,
the bandwidth is safe with sysops like mine. Ok, try again.

Don Stokes <don@news.daedalus.co.nz> wrote:
> I don't recall any enhanced standard, although one may have come too
> late to save the language.

I seem to recall (it's been well over a decade since i did any Pascal) that
the main difference between level 0 and level 1 (at least in BS6192 Pascal)
was conformant array parameters, which were a moderately-sized piece of
band-aid around just one of the more grotesque wounds in the language.

Certainly nothing supporting program modularity, abstract data types,
or indeed anything else important as a "software engineering" rather than
a "structured programming" concept.

pete
--
pete@fenelon.com "We ask ourselves what will become of Evil Gazebo?" (HMHB)

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
> thing.  The guy who wrote the PASCAL program also had
> no idea what I/O meant.

This is a very common trait of programmers who spend too long in Pascal.
The language and most of the pedagogical material that's grown up around
it ignores real-world I/O, and hence so do their programs.

pete
--
pete@fenelon.com "We ask ourselves what will become of Evil Gazebo?" (HMHB)

Dave Daniels <a__fake__address@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> think the standardisation committee decided that the first Pascal
> standard would keep to the Jensen and Wirth version of the
> language. There is a later Pascal standard, ISO 10206 I think,
> that adds a lot of features such as separate compilation, string
> handling and a proper string type, complex numbers and so forth.
> The standard came out in about 1990. I suspect that that was
> probably a bit late in the life of the language for it to have
> much impact.

..and by that point the "de facto" Pascal standard was Turbo -- and the
real Wirth fans had moved on to Modula-2 and Modula-3 (languages I think
are almost infinitely better than Pascal for writing non-trivial programs).

Oberon is interesting (I was a great advocate of it for some time) but
unless you're willing to think entirely in terms of extending an Oberon system
rather than writing standalone programs, it doesn't make much sense as a
general-purpose development language.

pete
--
pete@fenelon.com "We ask ourselves what will become of Evil Gazebo?" (HMHB)

Jim Thomas <thomas@cfht.hawaii.edu> wrote:

>Simo Tuominen wrote:
>
>> >>Gene Wirchenko (genew@shuswap.net) writes:
>> >>>
>> >>>      Brian W. Kernighan, he of C fame, wrote an very interesting essay
>> >>> called "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".  In it,
>> >>> he skewers Pascal but good.
>>
>> It seems the language is even worse than I had imagined, which is
>> probably attributable to my (lack of) experience trying to write
>> anything useful using it.
>
>Come now.  You can't take a few things which are bad (and make the original
>language unusable for real programming :-( and judge the whole language.

     Have you *read* Brian Kernighan's essay?  He has several
*categories* of things that are bad.

>C is lousy for teaching Computer Science.  Pascal->Modula->Ada are good
>for teaching Computer Science.  IMHO, of course :-)

     I'd prefer something a little more RW.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

jmaynard@thebrain.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) wrote:

>On Mon, 08 May 2000 21:43:20 -0400, Carl R. Friend
><carl.friend@prescienttech.com> wrote:

[snip]

>>   There is room for more than one programming language on the
>>planet, you know.
>
>Absolutely. I do believe in the right language for the job, be that language
>C, assembler, COBOL, Perl, or even BASIC (which is unsurpassed for
>quick-and-dirty knockoffs on micros). There is a place for a suitably

     Yes.  A favourite of mine for Q&D.

>extended Pascal in there, too.
>
>>  That said, I agree that Pascal is little more
>>than a "toy" language and that the expenditure in time of under-
>>graduates learning it would be much better spent elsewhere.
>
>I, too, have tutored an undergrad in a Pascal class, and saw firsthand what
>problems it causes. I don't have a better answer, though, because other
>languages have their own sets of problems when used as a first language.
>Some schools are going to Java for an introductory language, but I have no
>experience with it, and so can't comment on its suitability.

     I can.  Pascal is much more suitable.  Pascal is unsuitable.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.

bill_h <bill_h@azstarnet.com> wrote:

>Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>
>> "J G Llasa" <llasa@plastic.screaming.net> wrote:
>>
>> >All these women pioneered nothing.
>>
>>      Ada Lovelace was arguably the world's first programmer.
>
>Not even close. The astronomical calculators of the ancients
>(Egyptians, Druids, etc) preceeded by many centuries ......

     They were mathematicians, but programmers?  I don't think so.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
     I have preferences.
     You have biases.
     He/She has prejudices.