Sorry but Pascal is something very miserable. Turbo Pascal is good compiler and IDE but Pascal language is bad
Sorry, but the := vs. = syntax belongs to one of the most ignorant arguments against Pascal
You're absolutely right.
To understand this (Pascal), you need to see the time.
We're talking 1980s.
There was no "computer science" yet at universities.
People getting involved in computers are either urged to use that new technology, mostly natural scientists at universities or office staff of big companies (from those came most reluctance against Unix).
Or were interested in, mostly mathematicians, physicists and electronics engineers (Unix/BSD), and also technically interested students, which mostly only could afford a homecomputer (BASIC), those 1MHz, 64kB, not necessarily with mass storage but with TV connection things.
The "rest" got to computers mostly in the late 90s.
It was completely normal that anybody needed to have at least a small class in computers first before you were allowed to use them.
(At least people learned, what "save file to disk" means, instead of blindly trust the system automatically syncs with a cloud in the background ?)
Part of most of those classes also contained a bit fundamental start of programming, because this not only teaches you how a computer works but there also often was a need to write at least small programms for yourself.
There was no internet like today, where you just quickly google a free tool that does the job you need.
Most today's users simply don't get the concept of having an powerful automation monster directly in front of them and use it to automate.
They only got "powerful". ?
Book tip for the summer:
Clifford Stoll,
The Cuckoo's Egg - you'll virtually dive into the Berkeley of the early 80s, get a colorimeter of computers of those days, the dawn of internet and especially Berkeley Unix.
Back to (sub)topic:
Pascal was originally never ment to be a programming language for doing real, big stuff.
(Even if modern interpreters are capable of doing a serious job.)
It was ment to lead people to programming by teaching the basic concepts of a higher procedural language (this were pre-objective times) and above all structured programming.
Those homecomputers had a very primitive BASIC in their ROMs, acting as some kind of very primitive OS.
But sadly BASIC was also promoted to be the best start to learn programming with.
That's where this GOTO-spaghetti-code crap came from.
Pascal's syntax is so cumbersome, particulary function names are so long, not to be efficient for programming, but to make the programming elements clearly visible and get closer to natural language, so total newcomers to programming would not completely freak out by seeing short, efficient, abstract syntax.
Or even Assembler, which was the only real alternative to programm something halfway usable on a homecomputer.
Many like me, also started learning programming with (Turbo)Pascal in school, later had problems when switching to C at university.
E.g. you still trying := ?
:= may a bit fussy, yes.
It's because the founder of Pascal, Niklaus Wirth, is a mathematics professer (even swiss. Those can be even more picky than germans ?.)
And he wants it to be correct.
He wanted to have a clear distinguish between the mathamatical equal = and a computer's value allocation.
Friends who are good in math I tried to teach the very basics of programming, really had a hard time to understand i = i + 1
For people in computer's this is totally clear what this does, because they see the computer's function in it:
The step that the computer first calculates the right side, then the second when it allocates that value to the left.
A mathematician sees no steps here.
He sees an equation, with i is always the same on both sides of the =
And that's completey useless for what you want a computer have to be done.
Either i on both sides have the same value at the same time, so the equation is wrong.
Or i has no defined value. Then the equation is not solvable as to have a single scalar value.
Kernigham & Richtie just decided not to be so very correct, but instead to have small, short syntax with as less typing and reading effort as possible.
<ps>
<text>
<statement>
<word> then <\word>
<anotherword> some <\anotherword>
<word> day <\word>
<xml> XML <\xml>
<wordagain> appeared <\wordagain>
<word> and <\word>
<word> we <\word>
<anotherword> discuss <\anotherword>
<nowordbuttext> := <\nowordbuttext>
<word> over <\word>
<nowordbuttext> = <\nowordbuttext>
<\statement>
<\ps>
<\text>
??
If you bother about Pascal's syntax already then XML must be really annoying.
XML does everything what over seventy years of computer science has figured out and defined as DON'Ts
Except for webpages there is absolutely no reason and no excuse to use this shit for anything!
Anybody who uses it in my eyes failes the fundamental rules of coding.
"Keep readability above efficiency" - Yeah, then don't do XML! Never, ever!!
Because XML is neither of it.
Even on FreeBSD I trip more ond more over that shit.
Just yesterday again: /etc/regdomain.xml
wtf is the use of doing this file in XML!?!
There is none, except you think you have to because others also do.
Sorry, frankly, but there is no other word to describe this as crap!
Endless special characters, lots of problems, with charsets, escapecodes..., more bytes to be processed and stored... - problems only for one single no-real-benefit at all, only:
"looks better" in a browser. Great!
I am not doing my system's config work with a browser.
Besides I do not know what the browser saves and supplies to other websites/services,
(where we were back to topic, again)
I am editing textfiles.
So therefore I am neither using a browser,
nor I'm doing code on LibreOfficeWriter, MS Word or shit neither.
I am using a texteditor.
If you need something from such a file, or want to edit ist, you cannot use it as a template,
you cannot copy-paste it,
because first you need get rid off all that XML-rubbish.
Besides it's hard to read that trashed up rubbish, xml forces an additionally extra step whixh neither you nor the computer wants:
User: text -> xml-interpreter -> xml
Prg: xml -> xml-interpreter -> text
That's BS!
text <-> text
Basta!
We don't need to discuss := or =
If you want a=1
don't do something like
<bs>
<var> a <\var> <=> = <\=> <value> 1 <\value>
<\bs>
just write
a=1
!!!1!eleven ?
