Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!aplcen!haven!adm!news From: A1.RJS@isumvs.iastate.edu (Ricardo Salvador) Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal Subject: Upgrade to TP 5.5 Message-ID: <22298@adm.BRL.MIL> Date: 1 Feb 90 20:01:08 GMT Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL Lines: 43 Gavin C. H. Zau asks for reasons to upgrade from Turbo Pascal version 4 to version 5.5: >What are the main advantages of the new version? >Can it use extended memory? How hard is it to upgrade >existing programs - we have a lot of data aquisition programs. The main innnovation in 5.5 is the addition of object-oriented programming (OOP) features. This boils down to the addition of some keywords (OBJECT, VIRTUAL, DESTRUCTOR, CONSTRUCTOR) that enable you to encapsulate a data structure together with the procedure(s) that work on that data structure. In addition, all or some of the features of any given data structure can be "inherited" by a new data structure, so that any parent data structure can diverge into several polymorphic data structures. This kind of "smart" data structure is referred to as an object and can be of great aid in programming complex processes or events, such as a GUI for example. If you don't care about OOP, then another factor to keep in mind is that upgrade costs for future versions of TP will undoubtedly be lower if you've kept up with the upgrade path (i.e., it will be cheaper to upgrade from a recent version than from an older version). If you _are_ interested in learning more about OOP as a programing paradigm that may become universal in the near future, then you should check Dick Pountain's article in the current (February 1990) issue of BYTE. The instance of an OOP language that Mr. Pountain uses for his examples is TP 5.5. A quick reading of this should give you a good feel for OOP and give you an indication of whether the upgrade is worth it for you. In every other respect, you will find that version 4 and 5.5 are upwardly compatible. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Ricardo Salvador - Iowa State University of Science and Technology - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Asst. Professor of Agronomy +------------------------+ Computer Education Specialist | BITNET: A1.RJS@ISUMVS | for the College of Agriculture | A3.RJS@ISUMVS | 117 Curtiss Hall | A3RJS@ISUVAX | Iowa State University of | COMPUSERVE: RSalvador | Science and Technology | GEnie: R.Salvador| Ames, Iowa 50011 +------------------------+ -------------------------------------------------------------------- "Education is a journey, not a destination." --------------------------------------------------------------------