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Pascal guilt.

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shihonage:
My first language was BASIC - Spectrum Basic, Atari Basic, GW-Basic. I wrote a SOKO-BAN clone and an expert system in it. In 1992 I went to a course that taught Pascal. I remember sitting in front of a flickering CRT screen, staring at that beautiful yellow-on-blue text, and jumping a step or two ahead of the teacher. He noted that I was "catching on fast".

I didn't even realize at the time how much I'd love this language. Most things I've ever written for myself since then, were in Pascal. And I always felt guilty about it, like I need to "be a grown-up programmer" and move on to C/C++ and such languages. Because... that's what grown-up programmers do?

The game I recently put on Steam, was written in Pascal (even if its visuals are dire). The realtime stockmarket analysis project I attempted in 2001. The hack of the first Doom multiplayer service in mid-90s (it was a DOS TSR). The program which sends automated reminders to people in my dojo - because it was easier to do it in Pascal than in Yahoo calendar or crap like that. Also, the program I made to run automatic re-encode of certain video formats.

And yet my magnum opus game, an isometric RPG inspired by Fallout, is written in C/C++. I started in 2007, because I wanted to be a "grown up and serious" programmer... and in retrospect, I should've written it in Pascal.

C/C++ allows you to do too much. It's so easy to make errors which will not be properly caught, as the language thinks you're trying to do something else. Maybe it's my fault, but I spent months one time finding a memory leak.

Pascal is tough love. In Pascal I always know exactly what went wrong, it has excellent runtime error tracking, it isn't overwhelming me with industrial-size pile of options and features.

My RPG is currently stalled, partially due to how much harder it is for me to understand large quantities of C code and "reliably alter them" than it is with Pascal.

So I am starting on a new project, an Interactive Fiction engine of a different kind, and I started writing this C++ program with SDL (like a good little grown-up), and then I found that the SDL 2.x headers were translated into Free Pascal, and there's a tutorial site for it!

I know C, my former software career forced me to learn stuff like PERL, and yet all I want to use is Pascal - the language I learned at 15 years of age - because I am good with it, because it's trustworthy like a good friend, because I enjoy using it - and as result, it makes me feel like I am "refusing to grow up and be mature".

Maybe my brain is just broken, I don't know.

After all is said and done, I will wrestle down my guilt, and write this engine in Pascal/SDL, because I FUCKING LIKE IT.

I can only hope that Pascal continues to live on, to "indulge" people like me, who "never grow up".

Thank you for keeping Pascal alive.

Windsurfer:
The ascent of man is the triumph of logic over emotion. Welcome.

Handoko:

--- Quote from: shihonage on May 20, 2016, 01:51:59 pm ---Thank you for keeping Pascal alive.

--- End quote ---

Pascal will alive if we work together.

Welcome to this forum. And please share your love of Pascal back to the community, helping each other and make Lazarus/FPC/Pascal better.

Ñuño_Martínez:
You shouldn't feel guilty.  You should rewrite your game using Pascal.  I'm doing games in Pascal right now, and I'll start to do it professionally soon (preparing to start my first one monday right now).

On the other hand, C is nicer... for low-level.  But for high level, Pascal is better.

shihonage:
Thank you :)

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