🚀 go-pugleaf

Randall Leroy Speaks wrote:
> 
> In article <33098F1F.6C75@airmail.net>,
> Alan M. Evans <look4me@airmail.net> wrote:
> >Giora Drachsler wrote:
> >
> >> Pascal is the best language for learning programming.
> >...
> >> BASIC, on the other hand, has been developed with real-world
> >> applications in mind
> >...
> >> Only someone who knows only Pascal can claim that it is better
> >
> >You're right. I give up. Pascal is useless for writing real world
> >programs. All you silly Pascal programmers switch to BASIC now if you
> >want to get anything useful done.
> >
> >AME
> 
> Alan,
> 
> i am going to be gentle with you. no...i am going to be straight
> forward with you and as honest as i know how.

I don't want or need you to be gentle with me. I also don't care for you
to hold my hand, thank-you-very-much.

> you need to stop

No. You need to stop. You speak in an extremely condescending way.
Frankly, you sound like a 19-year old trying to prove his place in the
world. Answering technical discussions with fanciful stories of people
falling off limbs don't accomplish anything but making you look
arrogant.

> trying to convince people that pascal is this mystical, celestial
> entity that is above their comprehension; that you can descend
> upon those who don't 'believe' that your magical sword is superior
> to anything they have so far conceived and smite them  with its
> beauty and convert them. it is presumptuous and insulting, not
> instructive.

I don't believe any such thing. Am I to assume that, by posting this
reply, you are saying that you agree with Giora Drachsler? Do you
actually believe that Pascal is only for learners and BASIC is for power
users? I hope not.

What I _have_ been saying is that Pascal programmers and BASIC
programmers approach similar programming problems differently. If a
translator were made to bridge the gap, it would likely not produce good
code even if the converted code did work properly, which is also
unlikely.

I have plenty of Pascal code which I don't believe would translate to
BASIC well at all. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I DON'T THINK THEY COULD BE
WRITTEN IN BASIC. It means that the solutions would be written
differently in BASIC programmatically. A _translation_ would end up a
kludge, particularly if it weren't a human doing it.

How would a translator deal with things like:

  Sets: I still don't think they hold much similarity to arrays.

  OOP: I'm not even aware of a dialect of BASIC which supports this. If
there is, I'm sure it's implemented very differently.

  Typed Constants: They are more than simply pre-initialized variables.

  DATA statements: I can't believe that no BASIC advocate has brought
_this_ up yet. Here it is: A BASIC construct for which there is no
Pascal equivelant. The closest maybe: a Stream or a Typed Constant
Array. Not very close.

It all boils down to this: What we are talking about is translating the
easiest language to parse into the hardest language to parse. (Who in
this thread said that? It was brilliant!) I'm not saying this is
impossible; I'm saying that it is extremely difficult at best and
probably not worth the effort.

> Alan, i cannot imagine any programmer on the face of this earth
> denying the value and power of pascal.

You don't need to imagine it. Giora Drachsler's comments are quoted at
the top of this message.

> but the approach you are
> taking with the wonderful power you hold in your hands, in the
> form of pascal, can only lead to frustration and perhaps even
> embarassment for you. you obviously have a good deal of
> programming knowledge.

Do not patronize me.

> but i have been following your intriguing
> display of nested procedures that you are attempting to dazzle Nick
> with.

For the sake of clarity, here is my dazzling display to Nick Coons:

> > Except that those subroutines aren't nested. The sub _calls_ are nested,
> > but not the subroutines. Can you do something like this?
> >   SUB SubAAA ()
> >     SUB SubBBB ()
> >       PRINT "Hello, World!"
> >     END
> >     CALL SubBBB
> >   END
> > Making local procedures and functions is an extremely useful feature, I
> > believe. It has been some time since I developed anything in BASIC, so I
> > may be wrong, but I don't believe such a construct is legal in BASIC.
> You are correct, although I don't see any advantage to putting a
> procedure inside of a procedure.

Am I trying to dazzle someone here? Doesn't look like it to me. Looks
like I'm trying to point out a difference between Pascal and BASIC
program flow. Once again, my goal is to show that a Pascal programmer
and a BASIC programmer will approach a problem differently. Look at his
response: "I don't see any advantage..." Of course he doesn't. He is a
BASIC programmer and would not see this as a solution to a problem. His
approach would avoid it altogether.

I should note here that someone did point out to me that nesting
procedures is, indeed, legal in BASIC. Good. I'm glad that it is. It's
good to see that BASIC has grown up some since my BASIC days. I did say
that I may be wrong. It seems that even some BASIC programmers like our
friend Nick are unaware of the construct.

> i admit, that the way you present them appears formidable
> to understand. but it's not because i don't know how to program
> in basic or pascal.

I've grown tired of this conversation. And I believe that this entire
thread needs to move to some advocacy newsgroup, which is what needs to
happen to any thread that turns from "Pascal to BASIC converter" to
"Pascal vs BASIC."

AME