Pascal's identity.

Thu, 13 Mar 1997 23:11:11 -0500

Berend de Boer wrote:
> 
> I think if you really want var args, function overloading, powerfull
> preprocessors, etc. program in C or C++.
> 
> Don't fool with Pascal's identity.

As far as I am concerned, Pascal has no identity.  Pascal is what developers
make of it.  Standard Pascal was practically useless when Borland wrote TP.  They
popularized it by making it competitive with the other "hot" languages at the time:
Compiled Basic and C.

I can understand a need for language purity.  However, if Pascal does not evolve to
support those constructs used by modern programmers, it will be forgotten.

I don't see why Pascal could not evolve to have exceptions, coroutines, multiprocessing 
support, or objects/classes.  Delphi has provided some of these already.

Heck, C++ is evolving as we speak.  Why should Pascal be the laggard?

Note: Personally,  I don't want to see a preprocessor in Pascal.  CPP has thoroughly 
screwed up C/C++.  The import facility is better than #include in C.  Perhaps we should 
look more towards Java for new features rather than C++ (shudder!).
[stuff deleted]> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Berend.

Cheers!


Ronald Perrella
perrella@mindspring.com
Roswell, Georgia, USA.

Ronald Perrella (perrella@mindspring.com)