I stumbled upon one question on the dispute about Pascal. Although the language has ceased to evolve - many believe that the language still performs the function of teaching PL. Maybe someone thinks that using this language is best to perform any tasks.

Personally, my opinion! This language in general should be excluded from the training program, it is dead, why learn programming in it? The SI language will perfectly cope with the teaching function, which will always be relevant.

And what happens? A person learns the language of Pascal, then comes to the university and then SI begins, he has to learn a new syntax. Pascal is no easier than other programming languages, why is it used for learning!?

Please change my opinion, for some reason with whom, I would not argue to me without arguments that they answer Pascal for study. Yes, he does not teach anything good. When the teacher was at school, I tried to teach this language, I, like a fool, spent several days studying it, downloaded a little book, and then met a normal person at the forum, he told me that Pascal was a shit, pointed to Basic, did not long stay on it SI. And now I easily understand many actual programming languages, but I had to understand pascal when I was engaged in tutoring - it’s much harder there.

So, I listen to your opinions on this. Why this language? Wouldn't it take him out of the school, in some cases, the university program?

Closed due to the fact that it is necessary to reformulate the question so that it was possible to give an objectively correct answer to the participants velikodniy , fori1ton , Nofate ♦ 20 Apr '15 at 17:31 .

The question gives rise to endless debates and discussions based not on knowledge, but on opinions. To get an answer, rephrase your question so that it can be given an unambiguously correct answer, or delete the question altogether. If the question can be reformulated according to the rules set out in the certificate , edit it .

  • What questions should not be asked? - Yura Ivanov
  • @Yura Ivanov, in rare cases, worth it. I wondered why Pascal is so protected. Here sit the pros with great experience, hoping to explain. And finally, I can confidently leave out those who will rub me about the "divine language - Pascal", or I will agree if they convince me. - iproger
  • The answer is dead. - AseN
  • 7
    > And finally, I can confidently omit those who will rub me, please try to avoid sub-vocabulary like "omit", "rub" and so on - you aren't some rednecks, I hope? - DreamChild

4 answers 4

The question is actually curious. I'll start with Pascal's "dead". Pascal has a couple of problems that can kill him - in his time, the notorious Borland office suffered experiments like Ddelphi.NET, thanks to which for a long time Delphi 7 remained the last reliable version of the environment and language. Then another company picked up the fallen banner, but time was lost - the web development age came, then mobile applications, and the pascal niche remained in desktop applications and other segments whose market share was shrinking. I must say that Embarcadero picked up this fallen banner with benefit, having done a lot of useful work, it seems that even on it you can now write something cross-platform, but the train seems to have left (plus their strange licensing policy also does not give popularity to their products). All these troubled times were not in vain, and for many Delphi-programmers, for various reasons, time has so far stopped at Ddelphi 7, from which they don’t get out. The following follows from the above: it is impossible to call him dead - there are thousands of tons of Legacy code that must be accompanied now and 30 years in the future, there are all kinds of praiseworthy attempts from Embarcadero from which something worthwhile can come out. But still his finest hour probably passed.

Now about the main thing. I quote:

Personally, my opinion! This language in general should be excluded from the training program, it is dead, why learn programming in it? The SI language will perfectly cope with the teaching function, which will always be relevant.

You are very wrong in your question and specifically in this quotation — you judge it very categorically and unreasonably, with a predominance of emotions, and not reasoning. Pascal has value as a good choice for learning, regardless of how widely or narrowly it is used in production and development. Because at institutes (in normal in any case) they do not study Pascal himself , but the basics of programming and algorithms using Pascal.

Pascal is good for learning this: in a clear and intelligible syntax, where control structures are encoded not with brackets, icons and all sorts of characters, but with the help of human language words (compare human begin begin and short, but with nothing logically related curly braces) . This is subsequently the verbosity of Pascal's syntax becomes a bone in the throat, and for a beginner it is a kind of bridge between his human logic and the logic of a computer program. Pascal is also good for learning by its rigor - static typing, variables can only be declared in the allocated blocks, and not anywhere (this later becomes more inconvenient as experience grows, but for the time being it teaches the novice to order in the program) With, say, stuffed with C ++. Moreover, unlike, let's say, C # / Java doesn’t impose Pascal immediately on you (the object is undoubtedly useful, but the newcomer still needs to grow to it). That is, Pascal is good for its simplicity, obviousness, human comprehension, austerity, does not accustom to laxity and crutches - in general, all this is well suited for training beginners. I will not argue that Pascal is the best language to start, but it is clearly better than many.

To say that, comrades, say, start learning from C / Java / C # / etc, it will be useful to you in the future, and Pascal will not be useful - this, of course, is not without meaning, but it does not have much practical use. Practice shows that by the end of the institute the graduate usually does not yet have deep knowledge of the language, but already has enough experience to switch from one language to another without serious consequences. Therefore, the transition from Pascal to something else is not a problem.

Wouldn't it take him out of the school, in some cases, the university program?

Well, it is not we who decide, and, perhaps, not even the Ministry of Education. In each specific institution of higher education, they usually make their choice about the language in which to teach students.

ZY I myself have no relation to Pascal, I did not write on it from the student’s desk, and therefore I do not suffer from special love and bias. However, it is precisely as a teaching language that it is useful. Just the percentage of its use in business projects is another story altogether; it has no relation to student learning.

    For those who write deeply in what language to write, and for those who are measured in terms, there is a difference between a living language or not. The syntax of a language is easier to learn than to understand at least the basics of programming.

    Holivar Detected, I will close the topic.

    • Gosha. How much aggression - Bekzod

    It is strange that the topic is still not closed. But since this is so, then, of course, I will express an opinion.

    Giving such an importance to the vividness / deadness of the language immediately gives the wrong understanding of what learning is. A living language as a teacher is preferable to a dead one only in a very special segment of training, within the framework of which practically useful skills are pumped. On the one hand, we cannot exclude this segment, since this is, after all, training. But, on the other hand, it is necessary to understand that this is the level of vocational schools, and training is not reduced to this. When we talk about education, even if it is professional, we mean not so much vocational schools as universities.

    And universities work on a slightly different principle. They are not specific skills help to pump, and try to teach you to think correctly. Based on the fact that this will help in the future to independently pump the necessary skills all my life. And for such a task, a dead language is at least as good, and maybe even better. At least, learning in a dead language minimizes the temptation to write a game, which has a positive effect on learning, since it reduces the likelihood of losing interest in pure abstractions and rolling down to the level of vocational school. Now it is especially dangerous. Previously, to program games, you had to deeply understand mathematics. Now for programming graphics, there are ready-made engines.

    As for Pascal specifically, he is best suited for learning, if only because mankind has not yet invented anything better for this purpose. He has many flaws. But such a balance between simplicity and the degree of proximity to the machine does not provide any other language known to me. Simplicity is critical to maintaining motivation when learning. And the degree of proximity to the machine is crucial in order to learn how to program the machine.

    There are simpler languages ​​... for example, Python. But there is no way you can learn what really happens in the computer. On it almost nothing can be learned. Let's say the Python type system is difficult to learn. With it, you can only understand how important the type system is, if you already know what it is and what it is all about. Here in order to understand this, Python fits perfectly ...

    There are languages ​​closer to the machine ... for example, C and C ++. But they are too complicated to start with. At one of my previous jobs, they once hired an intern with no experience whatsoever. Based on the fact that he learns to program in C ++ in the process. We decided that it was normal. We somehow learned C ++. And he seems to be a smart little one. Also can. Three weeks later, he quit with the words that he did not want to be a programmer at all.

      I advise everyone to learn first + sy. he who writes on the pros can easily write to any other language. Pascal is dead for a long time. no sense from him at all!