Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvax1!schwartz From: schwartz@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal Subject: Re: splitting comp.lang.pascal, Turbo Pascal Message-ID: Date: 12 Oct 89 05:50:50 GMT References: <13380@reed.UUCP> <111@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> <408@uwm.edu> <438@e-street.Morgan.COM> Sender: news@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu Organization: Pennsylvania State University, computer science Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: amull@Morgan.COM's message of 10 Oct 89 14:53:26 GMT In article <438@e-street.Morgan.COM> Andrew P. Mullhaupt writes: Keeping a unified news group is one way to help keep Pascal unified. Once a language falls apart, (C, Lisp and APL are examples of the danger here) it's really awful to get people back together. I think that traffic here is small enought that putting "turbo" in one's kill file is the best solution to the tp pollution problem, but I don't think I agree with that statement... C and Lisp are much more unified than Pascal is, inasmuch as they each have an official standard that is widely implemented and supported by the user community. And rather than falling apart, these languages enjoy (ANSI C) or have enjoyed (Common Lisp) a convergence to the approved standard. Pascal, on the other hand, is cursed with a twisty maze of ill conceived "de facto standards" proclaimed by compiler vendors, all different. My question is this: rather than rake an old but (previously) well defined language like Pascal over the coals again and again, adding new "features" by the score, why not just move on to new things? Use Pascal when you want Pascal, and use something else when you want something else. Wirth did that with Modula and Oberon; why don't we? -- Scott Schwartz Now back to our regularly scheduled programming....