Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!samsung!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!virtue!canterbury.ac.nz!phys169 From: phys169@canterbury.ac.nz Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: Turbo Pascal vs. C Message-ID: <1990Sep27.104259.9245@canterbury.ac.nz> Date: 27 Sep 90 08:09:29 GMT References: <1990Sep20.164153.28641@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1990Sep21.220031.19274@sj.ate.slb.com> Distribution: comp Organization: University of Canterbury Lines: 19 In article <1990Sep21.220031.19274@sj.ate.slb.com>, poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russell Poffenberger) writes: > But pascal was never intended to be a "useful" language. It was developed as > an aid in teaching structured programming. C is much more accepted as an > industry standard for software programming than pascal. > Turbo Pascal is definately a "useful" language, whatever the original Pascal was designed to be. There are, as everyone points out, pros and cons with both; Pascal's greatest advantage is that it is understandable, to the point that, if a program has no syntax errors then it has a *much* lower chance of logical errors than a C program - therefore it is best for beginners, prototyping, and high-reliability software. It is too easy in C to write a program that the compiler accepts, but contains a punctuation or pointer error which makes the execution go wrong. My favoutrite policy is to write major programs first in Turbo Pascal, let them go through several patches, then rewrite the program in C. This sounds like a lot of work, but it is good policy for programs to undergo a major re-write after the simplicity of the original has been spoilt but a history of hurried patches. Mark Aitchison, Physics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.