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From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: c++ vs ada results
Message-ID: <1991Jun25.174625.23341@neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 25 Jun 91 17:46:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: neon.1991Jun25.174625.23341
References: <1991Jun12.201740.16463@netcom.COM> <1991Jun16.041037.11606@kithrup.COM>  <1991Jun24.201111.13742@netcom.COM> <1991Jun25.112956.1@sdl.mdcbbs.com>
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Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
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In article <1991Jun25.112956.1@sdl.mdcbbs.com>, alanb@sdl.mdcbbs.com writes:
|> (I am aware many Pascal compilers do support modules - I hadn't heard there
|> was any standard for these extensions - if there is I retract the last
|> statement.)
The UCSD extension to Pascal introduced a Unit feature, which is
close to a "standard" on Mac and PC Pascals. A few years back, I saw
a proposed ISO (I think?) extension to the existing standard which would
have added modules, but with completely different syntax. It seems some
people out there still don't think PCs and Macs are real computers,
despite the fact that installed units must be in the 10s of millions
by now, and the high end versions of these things can run bigger
programs than mainframes could a few years ago. (And run into equivalent
project management problems - if not worse, because designing for the
mass market must be harder than doing it for a specific customer.)

Pascal is gradually being superseded on the Mac by C++, since this
is the way Apple is going, and no doubt the application developers
will have to follow to avoid interface problems.

There is a huge number of PC / Mac programmers who have
grown up on compilers like Turbo Pascal (PC) and Think Pascal
(Mac). I wonder if these people outnumber FORTRAN and COBOL
programmers on mainframes. (I would be interested if anyone
has figures for this.)

So much for the COBOL/Fortran to Ada learning curve. What of the
Pascal to C++ learning curve?
-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu