Subj : Re: RIP Niklaus Wirth
To   : tenser
From : Dr. What
Date : Sun Jan 14 2024 11:13:01

-=> tenser wrote to Dr. What <=-

 te> "Programming Pearls" was written by Jon Bentley
 te> (who's father, incidentally, was a Marine at the
 te> Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War).

 te> You may be thinking of, "Software Tools", which was
 te> in ratfor ("Rational FORTRAN" --- a preprocessor that
 te> took a semi-structured language and emitted FORTRAN)
 te> and later translated into Pascal.

You are correct.  I got them mixed.

I used to read "Programming Pearls" in the back issues of the Journal of the
ACM back in college and had picked up the book.  Sadly, I let it go a long time
ago.

I discovered "Software Tools" shortly after that (which is probably why I got
them mixed) and read that one cover to cover.  I think I even did some of the
code in Pascal (before "Software Tools in Pascal" came out) as an exercise.

 te> That was by Brian
 te> Kernighan and PJ Plauger.  Incidentally, that caused
 te> Kernighan to write is, "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite
 te> Programming Language" paper, which is worth a read:
 te> https://lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html

I vaguely remember reading that a long time ago.  PJ is right on his with his
criticism of Pascal.  But as he notes at the beginning "Comparing C and Pascal
is rather like comparing a Learjet to a Piper Cub - one is meant for getting
something done while the other is meant for learning - so such comparisons tend
to be somewhat farfetched."

My college profs were always clear: We are doing stuff in Pascal to teach you
good habits.  You won't use Pascal in the "real world", but the good habits you
pick up doing everything in Pascal will serve you well.  And they were (pretty
much) right.


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