Pascal recommendation?
in [Mac Systems]
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From: Salmon Egg on 27 Jan 2010 15:29 In article <1jcz6d0.1b6xnnakr4j60N%nospam(a)see.signature>, nospam(a)see.signature (Richard Maine) wrote: > Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > > > FORTRAN... > > I sometimes wished for a "uninitialized variable warning". > > Most (all?) modern Fortran compilers have one. > > > Again, I think we're veering into a religious aspect of this discussion > > and there's no cheese down that tunnel. > > Heathen. :-) I did a fair amount of FORTRAN programming at one time. Once I got to Pascal, I preferred it. As for the religious aspects, it seems the various vested language communities adapt practices from each other to keep the congregations happy and to recruit new members. In spite of that, there seem to be new computer language sects popping up all the time. Bill -- An old man would be better off never having been born.
From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Per_R=F8nne?= on 27 Jan 2010 16:09 Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > In article <1jcztd6.7q1wy61cstfmqN%per(a)RQNNE.invalid>, > per(a)RQNNE.invalid (Per R�nne) wrote: > > > nospam <nospam(a)nospam.invalid> wrote: > > > > > In article <1jczqy0.1lze1gq1yqygl5N%per(a)RQNNE.invalid>, Per R�nne > > > <per(a)RQNNE.invalid> wrote: > > > > > > > You can run GNU Pascal on your Mac. It is a kind of Borland Pascal and > > > > it is a free download: > > > > > > it's not well supported and not worth the trouble. > > > > If that is the case I would opt for Objective C - but of course I'm a > > computer science major with Pascal as my 'mother tongue' from my > > freshman year at The University of Copenhagen. > > What else can your tongue do? Tie mar-chino cherry stems into knots? We had English, German, Latin and French at school :-). Plus Danish / Scandinavian of course. > "Back in my day", computer science wasn't a separate degree. UCLA > offered a Math and Computer Science degree. 20 sections of Pascal and 1 > in Fortran, taught by the Engineering department. As a chemistry major, > I had zero use for Pascal (or Cobol). When I took the education, the full MSc degree study was prescribed to six years after the A-levels that we will usually finish at age 19 [and which included half of what is included in a four-year US college education]. Four for the major subject [computer science], two for the minor subject [English]. Bachelor degrees did not exist. And the six years was fulltime with grant scholarships at now $950 a month. Every active tertiary education student got this amount unless he had a large extra income or failed his exams too many times. -- Per Erik R�nne http://www.RQNNE.dk Errare humanum est, sed in errore perseverare turpe
From: BreadWithSpam on 27 Jan 2010 17:04 Tom Harrington <tph(a)pcisys.no.spam.dammit.net> writes: > In article <SalmonEgg-5F14B1.02321527012010(a)news60.forteinc.com>, > Salmon Egg <SalmonEgg(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > What would people here recommend that allow simple data manipulations > > but not require much integration of software from multiple sources? > > Mac OS X comes with several scripting languages that would likely meet > your needs. Personally I'd suggest Python or Ruby, but Perl is also a > good choice. After several years of coding in (mostly) in Perl, mostly for Linux and Windows machines, I switched to Ruby and loved it. Of course, your mac has all of the above mentioned languages. Give Ruby a try. This is a quickstart 20 min. tutorial. Start it up, start up an instance of Terminal.app, type "irb" on your command line and you're off and running: <http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/> FWIW, I write lots of command-line level Ruby stuff, but haven't written any Mac GUI stuff with it. If you're interested in using a Mac GUI interface, you may like to look into RealBASIC, or really dive into XCode and all the languages it supports. XCode is free, and you can program freestanding apps in any of several languages including Objective C, Java, C++, and even Python or Ruby via some libraries. -- Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting
From: Tom Stiller on 27 Jan 2010 18:27 In article <yob7hr3dx2b.fsf(a)panix2.panix.com>, BreadWithSpam(a)fractious.net wrote: > Tom Harrington <tph(a)pcisys.no.spam.dammit.net> writes: > > > In article <SalmonEgg-5F14B1.02321527012010(a)news60.forteinc.com>, > > Salmon Egg <SalmonEgg(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > > > What would people here recommend that allow simple data manipulations > > > but not require much integration of software from multiple sources? > > > > Mac OS X comes with several scripting languages that would likely meet > > your needs. Personally I'd suggest Python or Ruby, but Perl is also a > > good choice. > > After several years of coding in (mostly) in Perl, > mostly for Linux and Windows machines, I switched > to Ruby and loved it. Of course, your mac has all > of the above mentioned languages. > > Give Ruby a try. > This is a quickstart 20 min. tutorial. Start it up, start > up an instance of Terminal.app, type "irb" on your command > line and you're off and running: > > <http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/> > > FWIW, I write lots of command-line level Ruby stuff, but > haven't written any Mac GUI stuff with it. If you're > interested in using a Mac GUI interface, you may like > to look into RealBASIC, or really dive into XCode and > all the languages it supports. XCode is free, and you > can program freestanding apps in any of several languages > including Objective C, Java, C++, and even Python or Ruby > via some libraries. There's Pasuha for simple GUI stuff using Perl and Platypus or an AppleScript shell to make the app double-clickable or drag-and-droppable. -- Tom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF
From: Richard Maine on 27 Jan 2010 19:30
Michael Vilain <vilain(a)NOspamcop.net> wrote: > In article <tom_stiller-214575.15275327012010(a)news.individual.net>, > > A good FORTRAN programmer can write a FORTRAN program in *any* language. > > ;-) > > So true. I found that out when I wrote a program in C and found that > the variables in subroutines didn't retain their values when you exited > back to the main program. "Automatic what?" I said as my friend the C > wizard explained what was going on. The values aren't retained in standard Fortran either (unless the variable has the SAVE attribute). Many programers get bitten by assuming the SAVE behavior, because the particular compiler(s) that they were accustomed to acted that way. This is pretty much a FAQ in terms of helping people port their Fortran codes (which I do a lot of). -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain |