Turbo Pascal 7.1

theotherosproject

I am not sure about the "legitimacy" of Turbo Pascal version 7.1. This is not about the item in the WinWorld library, it's about the version itself.

Back when I was first introduced to programming, I received a book called Основы Программирования (Programming Basics). The book was published in 2008 and featured Turbo Pascal 7.0 and C/C++. Seems strange to me that the authors wouldn't cover 7.1, even in a similar book by them, published in 2011. In fact, I have trouble finding any actual proof (documentations and such) of version 7.1's "official" existence. Can anyone enlighten me on this?

PS: I found this resource while looking around for Turbo Pascal info, looks interesting: http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/borpasv.htm

stitch

Anybody writing about TurboPascal in 2008+, in such a book setting, should not be taken seriously. There's far too many better alternatives these days.

Only reason I can think of is the author wrote the book for nothing but the $$$ and the TP7 is all he has?

theotherosproject

Actually, TP7 is quite a popular language taught in high schools, in countries like Russia. Of course, it can be due to lack of money for better IT equipment...

stitch

And this is why technological innovation remains in the west. Significant amounts of modern tools are available for free that there's no reason to not teach on something more modern.

Seriously when's the last time you heard of a stellar innovation or scientific breakthrough come out of Russia? You probably haven't and that's why Putin has this master plan to bring back the Soviet Union because returning to isolationalism is far easier than remaining competeitive in the global market.

calvinb

pascal's a nice language, but it's only used in academic settings to teach programming. at least Haskell and friends are actually used by the academia wizards

AirportsFan

Interesting to see there're still some work going on Pascal, as I always thought it died long time ago, and even can be categorized with Cobol and Fortran. What sort of solutions can be programmed on it and run on nowadays PCs anyway?

If it's to teach programming, other modern languages aren't really that hard to teach, providing logical thinking exists. By that you can learn any programming language. We had VB taught in school, then Java (lol) in university.

BOD

I hated pascal beyond description. I'll never understand why I was forced to learn it as an "introduction to programming" when there's tonnes of alternatives that are both easy to learn and actually fucking used for something practical in the last 20 years.

stitch

AirportsFan wrote:

Interesting to see there're still some work going on Pascal, as I always thought it died long time ago, and even can be categorized with Cobol and Fortran. What sort of solutions can be programmed on it and run on nowadays PCs anyway

Delphi is still very much active.

theotherosproject

BOD wrote:

I hated pascal beyond description. I'll never understand why I was forced to learn it as an "introduction to programming" when there's tonnes of alternatives that are both easy to learn and actually fucking used for something practical in the last 20 years.

I liked Turbo Pascal (never tried the original Pascal) because I found a tight link between simple logic written out in English and the programming language itself. Therefore, when I planned a small program and wrote the plan out, I had a very easy time writing it out in this programming language.


Anyone feels that the older programming books are better than the current ones? Today's books focus on just the language, but I find that the older programming books really teach the logic, the mindset of a programmer. Plus, there were plenty of exercises to go about.

BlueSun

theotherosproject wrote:

Anyone feels that the older programming books are better than the current ones? Today's books focus on just the language, but I find that the older programming books really teach the logic, the mindset of a programmer. Plus, there were plenty of exercises to go about.

My guess would be that, assuming that's the case (I haven't read a lot of programming books), the authors probably feel there's no need to repeat themselves. If you want to learn about the logic and the mind of a programmer, you can read one of the older books. If you already know that stuff and just need the syntax, pick up a new book.