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From: rogerson@PEDEV.Columbia.NCR.COM (Dale Rogerson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: OOP features in Turbo Pascal 5.5
Message-ID: <2537@PEDEV.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Date: 25 May 89 18:15:48 GMT
References: <846@wucs1.wustl.edu> <15150@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Reply-To: rogerson@PEDEV.Columbia.NCR.COM (Dale Rogerson)
Distribution: na
Organization: NCR Corp., Engineering & Manufacturing - Columbia, SC
Lines: 35

In article <15150@paris.ics.uci.edu> Alastair Milne <milne@ics.uci.edu> writes:
>grs@wucs1.wustl.edu (Guillermo Ricardo Simari) writes
>>Any comments about the OOP features in Turbo Pascal 5.5
>>and Quick Pascal of Microsoft?
>  
>     Turbo Pascal 5.5?  Last one I knew of was 5.0 .  Is this a simple typo,
>     or have a I missed an announcement from Borland?  
Again? Didn't I just upgrade to version 5.0? :-) I had to wait years for version4.0 and now every other month they come out with a new version.  I new there
was a catch to their low prices! (-: :-)
>
>     I don't know of "Quick Pascal".  The only Pascal I know of from Microsoft
>     is, as you would expect, MS Pascal.
It is listed in the Programmer's Connection Buyer's guide ($99 list).
>
>     As in UCSD Pascal, Turbo 4, Mac Pascal, Modula-2, etc. the unit construct
>     can be used quite effectively for creating a certain degree of object
>     orientation -- though I would probably continue to prefer the term
>     "abstract data types", 
>     Alastair Milne

The main problem with the Unit construct in the Turbo 4 is the lack of hidden
data, and generics.  These two features, found in Modula 2, allow the creation
of better abstact data types.  In TP if you want someone to use a data type
created in your unit (i.e. to pass it to you etc.) then this data type must
be fully discribe in the interface section of the unit.  This has the potential
for abuse.  If someone knows the implementation of you data type, the may start
coding in a way that will abuse the OOPs design.

Generics are even better, they make programming funner :-).  With generics
you can create link lists, stack, and other such structures without having to
worry about what kind of data is in the linked list or the stack.  This is
a really nice feature.

-----Dale
	Rogerson-----