[HN Gopher] Learn Turbo Pascal - a video series originally relea...
___________________________________________________________________
Learn Turbo Pascal - a video series originally released on VHS
Author : AlexeyBrin
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-10-11 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| florians wrote:
| This is entertaining. I learned Turbo Pascal in high school.
|
| What I like from watching it again: the aspect of structured
| programming.
|
| It's quite refreshing to see a language that doesn't rely so much
| on brackets.
|
| It even got away without syntax highlighting by using all
| uppercase REPEAT, BEGIN, END or capitalising function calls.
|
| Thanks for sharing!
| ofrzeta wrote:
| People tend to complain about excessive verbosity of some
| languages. However today with completion in every editor this
| should not be an issue, so why not use Pascal?
| schwartzworld wrote:
| The problem with verbosity isn't writing the boilerplate.
| It's adding to the mental overhead of reading it
| ofrzeta wrote:
| I'll claim without proof that if you are used to the
| language the mental overhead of "begin" and "end" is not
| bigger than for { and }.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| I also learned Turbo Pascal in high school, it's quite a trip
| returning to that time. I'm pretty sure that was the last year
| they taught Pascal at that school, and after that.... Java.
| Well, it was the 90s, I guess.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Capitalization is ignored by the compiler. So you can call it
| REPEAT, repeat, rEpEaT and so on. Same for variable names,
| functions, etc.
| janc_ wrote:
| Which is something that can cause annoying bugs when 2
| identifiers that are "obviously" different when you see them
| in CamelCase are interpreted as identical by the compiler...
| sph wrote:
| This is just lovely. I wish modern languages came with an
| introductory video like this, though I feel the programming
| world's got complex enough that 2 hours might be barely enough
| just to cover the build system.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Well, a youtube search for "typescript" returns about 13
| trillion videos, does that count?
| glimshe wrote:
| The manuals that came with development tools used to be
| excellent, too. Gosh, the manuals that came with computers used
| to be better than many technical books on the market today.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Haha yeah, I talked my dad into getting me the Borland Turbo
| C++ compiler for DOS when I was 12 or so and it came with a big
| ol' thick book that I attempted to teach myself with X-)
| https://winworldpc.com/product/turbo-c/3x
| bdcravens wrote:
| The first language I used professionally, in the late 90s, was
| Allaire ColdFusion. I worked for a small regional ISP, doing
| tech support, basic sysops, and some web development (we used
| FrontPage, hah!). We installed ColdFusion on our server, and
| since no one else was really taking initiative, I took home the
| books that came with, as well as the disk, and just devoured
| the information, and in roughly a week, I "learned" the
| language.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I feel that's a bitter feature, mostly enabled by comparatively
| slow and expensive update cycles.
| moltar wrote:
| My first language!
| bluedino wrote:
| I remember seeing the Mix C video courses in computer shopper
| magazine
|
| http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/cvideo.htm
| AlexeyBrin wrote:
| Would be great if they can release it on YT fully. I doubt
| anyone buys it today since it is so dated, but would be
| interesting from a historical perspective.
| jhbadger wrote:
| I loved Mix/Power C. That's how I learned C on DOS in the late
| 1980s. Mix also had a neat set of DOS tools that simulated UNIX
| on DOS -- no multitasking, but you got a Bourne-like shell and
| various utilities like grep and sed -- and the source code to
| them!
|
| http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/utility.htm
|
| (it's funny that their store's still up; I wonder if anyone
| buys from them in 2025)
| glimshe wrote:
| I learned C on PowerC that I got in a bundle that also included
| a C Primer from the Waite group. The primer came with a DOS-
| based C course with interactive quizzes. It was a fantastic
| combo.
|
| Oh... And my powerC edition included the full source code of
| their standard C library!
| analog31 wrote:
| I learned BASIC in high school, so I'm mentally mutilated, but
| with that said, my dad got me a copy of Turbo Pascal for my
| birthday, in the early 80s. He knew virtually nothing about
| computers, but had read an article in the Wall Street Journal
| about it. And my older brother was learning Pascal in college.
|
| The manuals were a joy. I read them cover to cover. I think I
| only skipped one update, up through version 5, and was still
| using it long after MS-DOS was obsolete.
|
| Today, in my rare moments of writing good code, I program like a
| Pascal programmer. I think you can easily do worse, but it's hard
| to do much better. One of the ideas that was prevalent at the
| time, was that as you learned programming, you should also be
| learning good programming practices.
| pb060 wrote:
| I hear you, I can write BASIC in any language.
| breppp wrote:
| spaghetti gotoing everywhere and leaving space lines in
| between code if you might need to insert something later?
| sph wrote:
| The good old On Error Resume Next
|
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/on-error-resume-next
| woodylondon wrote:
| I feel old - remember watching this when i started out, later
| went on to use Delphi before moving to the web.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Turbo Pascal was the first language I learned, in high school in
| the mid-90s. While I've never written it professionally, it'll
| always be important to me.
| wormius wrote:
| 90s high school Turbo Pascal gang represent!
| JoeDohn wrote:
| I learned Turbo Pascal in high school (early 2000), once in
| college I had to learn java yikes.
| mentos wrote:
| was searching for a rolling pin and tore apart my closets came
| across a box of like 20 books i havent looked at since before
| chatgpt
|
| had this sad moment when i realized i could probably toss all of
| the books on programming
|
| and this sinking feeling that i dont know how anyone ever sits
| down to learn this shit ever again
| satisfice wrote:
| That's Zack Urlocker. He's a real guy. I mean, not just a
| spokesmodel.
|
| I worked with him at Borland in the early 90's. He stands out for
| me because he's gracious in debate. You don't mind losing an
| argument to him.
| OCTAGRAM wrote:
| There is a love and hate relation from programmers who started
| from it. Hate goes from the fact different Pascals didn't manage
| to settle an agreement on standard. Well, there are ISO Standard
| Pascal and ISO Extended Pascal. But does Turbo Pascal conform to
| any of them? No. So do Apple Pascal, UCSD Pascal, whatever.
|
| As much as I hate C enemies, I must admit they were for some
| reason better at standard. If Pascals were such religiously
| adopting the standard and if C was remaining as fragmented as
| Pascal, with "otherwise" in one dialect and "else" in another
| one, then Pascal could win. Probably not the Turbo Pascal as we
| know it. Another Pascal, standard enough Pascal.
|
| Or maybe it should have been Modula-2. Amiga had TDI Modula-2.
| Don't know if TopSpeed Modula-2 and TDI Modula-2 were source
| compatible, but I guess far more than different Pascals.
|
| This table is built by ex. Pascal developer that moved to Ada:
| https://p2ada.sourceforge.net/pascada.htm
|
| Indeed, Ada's standard conformance is a breathe of fresh air.
|
| But Amiga had no Ada compiler, and had Modula-2 compiler. So for
| the sake of good guys' winning, if time machine moves me to 80s,
| I would pick Modula-2 for every platform. Nowadays Ada is a
| choice of good guy
| skopje wrote:
| Wish I had saved my VHS C++ Tutorials from 1990 with Bjarne
| Stroustrup. It was mostly him staring into the camera teaching
| C++. They don't appear to be on his homepage either. Bummer,
| because this was back before C++ went crazy, and they were a
| great intro to the "simpler" days.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| have you tried to reach out to him?
|
| Im pretty sure he is willingly sharing it, if there is no
| copyright issue or similar
| WalterBright wrote:
| Zortech produced a "Learn C++" series of videos in the 80's. They
| were popular and sold well. I never paid much attention, but a
| few years ago thought I might find them, and make them available
| on the internet.
|
| I did find them, and watched some of it, but the content was not
| worth preserving.
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Im wondering:
|
| NObody seems to remember the superhigh speed of the compiler? :))
|
| It was lightspeed compared to GCP++ or BC++
| ta12653421 wrote:
| Though: I have to admit - GCP brought 32bit protected mode via
| CWSDPMI, which was a clear killer.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| I went to a Borland product announcement show that was a few
| hours away and won the grand prize at the raffle at the end, one
| copy of every Borland product. Unfortunately I already had most
| of them, either from work (my High School job was programming
| commercial software) or personally, because my hobby was
| programming languages.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Write in C, write in C
|
| Write in C, oh, write in C
|
| PASCAL won't quite cut it
|
| Write in C
| alganet wrote:
| I'm not old enough to know if this is real footage.
| anarticle wrote:
| Turbo Pascal was my first IDE, and it was pretty nice for the
| time. Learning all the hotkeys and the immediacy of the interface
| was top notch. Help files were extremely well written which made
| getting back to writing code very fast.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-11 23:01 UTC)