LOL...

Oh PASCAL ... that brings me back ... I loved PASCAL as a language.  Personally I can't stand C/C++/C# ... it's only from necessity that I've coded with it but I avoid it as much as possible ... sure it's one of those syntax that one has to "get used to" but ask yourself "why - it's just syntax?".  In this day and age of compilers and development tools, curly brackets, and a host of other non-nonsensical symbols to present a construct just isn't needed.

 

If I want a "macho" language I'll code assembly language for real men ... haha

 

Anyway, PSX is Java for JVM?  I don't have anything against VM, but for absolute performance I can't say I'd choose to run under a VM as it's an abstraction layer with overhead and limits.  It also has lots of leeway in interpretation/implementation so it's not likely to be "exactly" the same across Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. ... there will be exceptions that need to be coded for and/or adjusted for.

 

Anyway, not trying to be down on PSX ... if the implement is easy enough across platforms (no gotchas) and performance isn't of the utmost importance, I can see the reason to go that direction ... try to gain as much interest/support across a broad base.

 

Cheers, Rob.

While looking to see how COBOL is faring these days, which was my primary language back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I found an article in which most of today's languages were ranked.

 

Much to my surprise, Java holds first place, followed by C, C++, Pyton, and C#.

 

http://readwrite.com/2014/09/17/cobol-programming-language-hot-or-not

I started programming with PASCAL, then moved to C, but as a computer science lecturer at Lisbon University, I did teach Eiffel, and even ADA.

 

I hated C++, skiped all sharps, don't like Python, and pretty much consider Java as a very well designed OO language.

Oh PASCAL ... that brings me back ... I loved PASCAL as a language. Personally I can't stand C/C++/C# ... it's only from necessity that I've coded with it but I avoid it as much as possible ... sure it's one of those syntax that one has to "get used to" but ask yourself "why - it's just syntax?". In this day and age of compilers and development tools, curly brackets, and a host of other non-nonsensical symbols to present a construct just isn't needed.

 

If I want a "macho" language I'll code assembly language for real men ... haha

Then there's ADA, which is Pascal on steroids!

Jim, I believe you meant Delphi ?  ADA is a totally different approach to programming, while Delphi is one of the variants of Pascal that already included "Objects" and "Classes"...

Jim, I believe you meant Delphi ? ADA is a totally different approach to programming, while Delphi is one of the variants of Pascal that already included "Objects" and "Classes"...

No, ADA has a very strong Pascal look and feel in its structure and syntax - any experienced Pascal programmer would definitely see the family resemblence, as both languages have a "distant common ancestor" in Algol.

 

Many keywords, looping constructs and general "syntax and grammar" are almost identical between Pascal and Ada.

 

Ada, of course, has many very powerful features not found in generic Pascal, but for anyone learning elementary Ada, having previous Pascal experience would make the process much easier. Kind of like learning Portuguese if you already know Spanish.

 

Indeed, Delphi is a direct outgrowth of Pascal - object oriented, with many features allowing rapid development of graphical user interfaces - in common with most other modern high-level languages.

I started with (cough, cough) ALGOL, then FORTRAN, PL1, APL (remember that RPN syntax, kind of like XML), but I did most of my hydrodynamic simulation work in Borland Pascal (which I agree was an elegant language) and then C (which I also agree, all its variants are designed to confound effortless programming). We eventually used Visual Basic for a lot of simpler projects. Today, I'd be lucky if I could write a bug-free XML gauge.

 

 

While looking to see how COBOL is faring these days

 

Did you know there is/was COBOL for the PC?  Back in the DOS days I got tricked into working on a COBOL PC project that was supposed to last a month and took me two years to finally rid myself of that project.

 

But if you really think about, all these languages are sorta silly ... or maybe I've just been doing this too long and I need to get out ... my current project is a combination of 7 different languages when it really should just be one ... it's the aftermath of ego, competition for market dominance, and stubborn "mine is better than yours".  I'm all for choice, but how many different ways can we compile down to assembly language which then ends up as machine code?  It's sorta ridiculous and I can't imagine this is good for programmers - I've navigated around the madness and survived 30+ years doing it, but at no point did I ever think that this many languages to produce the same end result was going to be good for me.

 

Cheers, Rob.

I started with (cough, cough) ALGOL, then FORTRAN, PL1, APL (remember that RPN syntax, kind of like XML), but I did most of my hydrodynamic simulation work in Borland Pascal (which I agree was an elegant language) and then C (which I also agree, all its variants are designed to confound effortless programming). We eventually used Visual Basic for a lot of simpler projects. Today, I'd be lucky if I could write a bug-free XML gauge.

 

Whow!  APL, and those special keyboards :-)

Ok, let's program a new standalone sim in COBOL!!!!  What do you think guys ?  :-)

Much to my surprise, Java holds first place, followed by C, C++, Pyton, and C#.

That's a misleading bit of statistic... it's not about the most popular, etc...

 

Even if we focus solely on programming languages focused on enterprise computing, and specifically on employer interest in hiring people with programming language expertise

Java is going to be #1 because it's cross-platform and very well versed for IT level requirements. Most 'back-ends' are written in Java and most 'front-ends' are written in HTML (more or less). That's the business side. It doesn't reflect what is the top language outside of corporate IT environment.

Did you know there is/was COBOL for the PC?  Back in the DOS days I got tricked into working on a COBOL PC project that was supposed to last a month and took me two years to finally rid myself of that project.

Back when I was just starting out, I somehow wound up taking COBOL, Fortran IV, and RPG during the same semester, all three of which were being taught by the same professor. For our final exam, he essentially assigned the same project to all three classes; a database and reporting system for a fictional golf course's operations.

 

He was amused when I turned in my solution, in which I'd used some of each...

 

RPG for input/output

Fortran IV for the math

COBOL for the control program and database

 

Bear in mind that this was still back in the days when everything was still being done on punch cards. When he asked why I'd concatenated the assignments this way I simply told him the absolute truth. I couldn't afford so many blank cards!

 

 

When he asked why I'd concatenated the assignments this way I simply told him the absolute truth. I couldn't afford so many blank cards!

 

Oh that kinda material you need to hang onto for stand up at a dev conference.  

 

Now you're bringing me back to my university days ... 3D graphics class (I use the term 3D loosely as graphics were very very primitive back then) ... broken out into teams (3 or 4) and I ended up coding most of our project.   The project was animation of the moon rotating around the earth and "was" supposed to include "shading" (light source, long before shaders) of both earth and moon based on sun position (time/date).

 

Being young and competitive I was ###### that my other team members dropped the ball on the light source part, what they came up with looked terrible and was incredibly slow to process ... ended up just cutting that part out of the project.  And sadly that costs us 1st place spot.  I think I used Assembly at the time because everything else was just too slow including C (which wasn't too popular back then).

 

What was this thread about again?

 

Cheers, Rob.