'goto" gone from computer languages or is it!

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Thu, 12 May 2005, Paul Koning wrote:

> >>>>> "Vintage" == Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> writes:
>
>  Vintage> On Thu, 12 May 2005, Allison wrote:
>  >> Basic is a language that is easy to code badly.
>  >>
>  >> I'm one of the few that was mostly BASIC and ASM until UCSD
>  >> P-system and decided to learn a "structured" language.  I was eye
>  >> opening the difference coding learned.  After that I tried writing
>  >> basic using block structure and treating goto and return like Call
>  >> and JUMP with better looking results. I can see the effect it had
>  >> looking at some of my really old code.
>
>  Vintage> My high school compsci teacher introduced me to "structured
>  Vintage> programming" in BASIC, and I accepted it, but it still
>  Vintage> seemed to stifle my creativity.
>
> No wonder -- structured programming in Basic is like doing carpentry
> with a nail file and a brick as your only tools.

Well, the intent was to get us ready for something entirely new.  The
class was small (only about 5 of the geekiest geeks in school), and all of
us were basically BASIC programmers.  I guess our teacher felt if he threw
us into Pascal without first introducing the concepts of structured
programming in something we knew then we might get totally lost.  It would
probably have been better to just be dunked in the pool and forced to
learn how to swim.

>  Vintage> In the second semester he
>  Vintage> forced me into Pascal.  Let's face it: the UCSD Pascal
>  Vintage> system just sucks.  I was willing to go along with it and
>  Vintage> learn Pascal until one day I put in the wrong disk during a
>  Vintage> proscribed disk swap and, instead of having proper error
>  Vintage> recovery, the OS proceeded to overwrite my disk with
>  Vintage> something else, losing all my source code.  I swore off
>  Vintage> Pascal from that moment on.
>
> I didn't realize the implementation was that bad.  Unfortunate that
> you mistook implementation incompetence as a reflection on the
> language rather than on the implementers.

Again, I swore off Pascal because of the UCSD system.  If I'd had Turbo
Pascal to learn on then things might've turned out much different.  Of
course, Turbo Pascal required a CP/M card and a license.  It was easier
for teacher to just copy UCSD Pascal ;)

Pascal is not a bad language to develop in.  But I much prefer the
succinctness of C.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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