From: arsouth@watson.ibm.com (Andrew R. Southwick)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: beginners on mac?
Date: 10 Nov 92 01:18:55 GMT
Reply-To: arsouth@watson.ibm.com (Andrew R. Southwick)
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
News-Software: IBM OS/2 PM RN (NR/2) v0.14g by O. Vishnepolsky and R. Rogers
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM

In <720655220.27269@zooid.guild.org> ron@zooid.guild.org (Secret Mud) writes:
>From: arsouth@watson.ibm.com (Andrew R. Southwick)
>>        If you want to write games, then I would recommend getting either
>>an assembler or C.  Pascal does not have the low-level bit-twiddling capabil-
>>ities that either of these other languages do; the new IM books have C and
>>assembly summaries in addition to Pascal summaries and code (which is all the
>>first series had).
>>        Probably the best resource you can find for Mac programming is knowing
>>another programmer, someone you can talk to every day (i.e. someone at school)
>>who is doing the same things you are.  It helps to have a local sounding
>>board, source code source, and fellow developer!
>>
>>        Good luck.
>>
>>Andrew R. Southwick        OS/2 & CORE        IBM TJ Watson Research
>
>Your Pascal might (hard to believe!), but the one I use doesn't.  Could we
>keep language fanaticism under control?

Gee, that message was about two weeks old, amazing its still there!

No, we can not keep our language fanaticism under control.
I take it your pascal code, then, is portable?  Standard pascal?
Given, each version of C defines its own length for ints, etc, C
is not implemenation-dependent.  If someone disagrees, pick up a
copy of the Hackers Dictionary and read the appendices.  And, if
you are going to be programming for an OS like the Mac, then the
code will be EXTREMELY un-portable.

But!  I still think Pascal is a B&D language.  It was originally
designed to be a sample language used for educational purposes, not
for writing large (>10,000 line) applications.  And you don't have to
play games to create dynamic arrays in C.  And if you complain that
C can smash the stack, then I must ask how much programming you have
done with C, and what other kind of errors you get.  C gets stack
smashing errors in logically incorrect code.  Pascal gets compile
errors.  And if you allow dynamic arrays, same deal.

My point in advising C over Pascal for beginning programmers is that
all the neat things that you learn that C can do need not be forgotten
when moving to a different OS.  The bit-testing and pointer handling are
all in C, not the implementation.  I don't even STDIO.H because I am
writing for the OS.  So: C keeps its small, efficient, clean definition.

Pascal by itself does not force good programming style.  You can still
create 400 line procedures in Pascal.  You can leave comments completely
out in any language.  So: this can not be used as a language-vs-language
arguement.

Which language would you rather write animation programs in?  WOuld you
rather use function calls to AND in a mask, then OR in the graphics?  Or
built-in language capabilities?

C is very flexible.  Rather than constraining the programmer to work around
the language contrainsts (see above), you are permitted to make errors.
You can create more errors in C?  So: do you test your code before you send
it out?  The errors are harder to find?  Program more often.  The same
programming errors tend to pop up, and are easier to identify if you've
done a good amount of programming.

OK, OK, this is a MFTL discussion.  If you think it has no place here,
don't post a followup and force everyone else to read it!  And you can't
send me mail, so blah!  I can't recieve mail!  Nyah!  And I've got
a Nomex suit, ha!
So don't flame back, you'll drag yourself down to my level! HA!

These views are my own; behaviorists can stick THAT up their ***!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew R. Southwick
From: the.maven@mavenry.UUCP