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From: Isaac_K_Rabinovitch@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Pascal Compilers
Message-ID: <949@cup.portal.com>
Date: Tue, 13-Oct-87 13:12:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: cup.949
Posted: Tue Oct 13 13:12:09 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Oct-87 06:06:27 EDT
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Isaac Heurta (no relation) writes:
->I'am a student at S.D.S.U. and I'am looking for a Pascal Compiler to
->run at home, instead of fighting it out at the campus computing center.
->I really don't care if the compiler is portable to other machines as I'll
->only be using it for homework assignments.
->        Has anyone had any experiance with Turbo Pascal by Bordland ?
->        If so, is the suitable for a novice???
My experience with Turbo 3.0 (the new 4.0 is a new can of worms) was
brief and painful, but it still seems to be the Pascal of choice for
someone like you, especially if your machine has limited memory and
only one floppy drive.  It's inexpensive, it's got an integral editor,
it's simple to use, and it caters to people who are still struggling
with Pascal syntax.

I have reservations, though (some of which don't apply to 4.0, but I'm
not familiar with that one).  The manual is really awful; it was written
(by someone not very self expressive) for the CP/M version and the MS-DOS
stuff is just pasted on.   You might want to check out books written
about TP, there are a ton of them.  If you're using one of the Cooper/
Clancy books, you should look for Cooper's Oh! Turbo!

The compiler is sloppy in places.  For example, READLN input of a number 
is supposed to be terminated by any input that isn't part of the number.
Turbo insists that the number be followed by a space or end-of-line.
That's the sort of error that unnecessarily corrupts the beginner's
faith in his own intelligence.  With this sort of problem, it helps
to have a symbolic debugger.  I've seen some interesting looking ones
that are Public Domain on various BBSs.

Still, on balance Turbo Pascal is the first choice (probably the only
choice!) for the beginner.