Re: Beautifiul Mind: Thinking about Dijkstra

x wrote:
> "David Cressey" <dcressey_at_verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:0jn4g.5128$7c.4397_at_trndny01...
> >
> > "Rich Ryan" <rryan_at_cshore.com> wrote in message
> > news:5kb4g.11880$%m4.8463_at_newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
> > > I'm a programmer from the mid 70's. At that time the language of choice
> > was
> > > Pascal and I think PL1. Both were very expressive in an algothrimic way.
> > The
> > > seminal work was "A Discipline of Programming". And also ""The Elements
> > of
> > > Programming Style" ala Strunk and White.
> > >
> > > Rich
> > >
> > >
>
> > In the mid '70s, I was doing some extracurricular programming in Algol.
> I
> > didn't run across Pascal until 1980. A few years later, I ran across a
> > book, "Pascal with Style". Very good book. I think we should be
> teaching
> > elements of style to beginnig programmers.
>
> In the '70s I was learning to speak :-)
> I didn't run across Pascal until 1988.
> If it were hard, I might have stumbled on it earlier. :-)
>
> > I think Pascal was (is) a good language. I wish there were a language
> that
> > does for OOP what Pascal did for structured programming.
>
> Almost everyone here learned programming by using Pascal since it was
> available.
> These years it was proposed to replace it with Oracle :-).

Pascal was and is a great language, and the first I learnt. I wish it was still taught at an undergraduate level as an introduction to programming instead of Java, which, as an educational tool, is disastrous. Received on Fri Apr 28 2006 - 15:06:54 CEST