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From: philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Pascal vs. C
Message-ID: <1990May9.180821.9886@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 May 90 18:08:21 GMT
References: <40837@apple.Apple.COM> <1690MAYER-A@RICEVM1>
Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 39

In article <40837@apple.Apple.COM>, marc@Apple.COM (Mark Dawson) writes:
> In article <1690MAYER-A@RICEVM1> MAYER-A@RICEVM1.BITNET (David Mayer) writes:
> >I'm a psychologist, not a programmer.  But I have done a good
> >bit of programming, and would like to learn to program
> >Macintosh applications.  I know a little Pascal and no C, but
> >I suspect that I should learn one of these languages.
[...]
> >I would appreciate any ideas or suggestions.  Thanks,
> >
> Well, to start off with, it somewhat boils down to a "religious" issue--i.e.
> strongly held personal opionions (though not in the same ballpark as Lisp
> programmers--they won't even admit to knowing how to spell "Pascal").
> 
> I personally use C,C++, and assembly.  Pascal is an easier language to learn 
> (I believe it was developed as a teaching language).  Many extensions have
> been made to make it more usefull as a professional programming language. 
> C was developed as a systems programming langauge, giving more support in
> accessing bits and manipulation of bits in memory.
> 
> I believe that C allows you to write more elegant and compact code, BUT it 
> also allows you to write code that is very gross and obtuse (its not
unusual to
> take hours to track down a wrongly dereference pointer).  If you're dealing
> with a lot of records within records, Pascal has the lead in readability (the
> WITH statement's really powerfull).
> 
> So...I think C is a more powerfull language than Pascal, allowing you to do
> more in less code.  This power comes at a cost, though.  C lets you get away
> with about anything, which means that sometimes it allows you to screw 
> yourself royal.  If you're more familiar with Pascal than C, I would only
> recommend switching to C if you're going to be doing a lot of manipulation
> of memory.
Another point: the Mac toolbox was originally designed to be called from
Pascal,
and C programmers occasionally get tripped up by variations in calling
conventions and the way strings are stored.

Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu