mjensen@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Marc S. Jensen) (11/24/90)
I saw this in a magazine recently, and just thought you all might find
it amusing:
10 Reasons Why Pascal is Better than C, by Owen Hartnett
========================================================
1. Pascal, noble language as it is, was names after a famous French mathema-
tician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal. C was named after a Sesame Street
character.
2. Pascal's inventor, Nicholas Wirth, and parameter passing conventions
coalesce to form a nifty pun: You can pronounce his name by reference
(Wirth) or by value (Worth). C was invented at Bell Labs, where they wouldn't
know a joke from a transistor.
3. There is only one Pascal, as defined by Wirth, while C has (shall we say?)
several fathers: Kernighan & Ritchie, Harbison & Steele, Barnum & Bailey, and
Laurel & Hardy.
4. In C, the following variable names are all different: thesame, TheSame,
theSame, and THESAME. 'Nuff said.
5. In Pascal, when you fool around with a pointer or handle, you know you're
fooling around with a pointer or handle. In C, you could be fooling around
with anything. C is the ultimate language for computational promiscuity.
6. In Pascal, we *know* how big an integer is.
7. C is used by liberal, Democratic, Mike Dukakis types of programmers.
Pascal is a favorite of the GOP. Hey, we know what the big language at
Berkeley is, don't we?
8. C is the only language in the civilized world that still refuses to
recognize the $ sign for a hexadecimal constant and continues to promote
that base pretender to the throne: 0x00.
9. Pascal has well-defined rules for Scope, while C appears to be using
Listering. This accounts for the medicine breath of many C programmers.
10. In C, you can do this:
for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
In Pascal, you can't do this:
for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
--
Marc Jensen
mjensen@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin
-----
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity!"zhou@brazil.psych.purdue.edu (Albert Zhou) (11/24/90)
This article is quite amusing. Where is it published? I would be interested in reading the whole article, and xerox some funny illustrations if there is any.
graham@convex.com (Marv Graham) (11/28/90)
In article <40100@ut-emx.uucp> mjensen@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Marc S. Jensen) writes: >10 Reasons Why Pascal is Better than C, by Owen Hartnett >======================================================== >4. In C, the following variable names are all different: thesame, TheSame, >theSame, and THESAME. 'Nuff said. I have alwys looked on this as a reasong to prefer C (which I do). Marv Graham; Convex Computer Corp. {uunet,sun,uiucdcs,allegra}!convex!graham
North_TJ@cc.curtin.edu.au (Tim North) (11/28/90)
In article <40100@ut-emx.uucp>, mjensen@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Marc S. Jensen) writes: > I saw this in a magazine recently, and just thought you all might find > it amusing: > > > 10 Reasons Why Pascal is Better than C, by Owen Hartnett > ======================================================== > > 10. In C, you can do this: > > for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2); > > In Pascal, you can't do this: > > for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2); > I'm a little confused about the type of th argument to the function P. In the first two calls to P we're passing in a string literal, but in subsequent calls we've got a mixed type expression; e.g. P("| " + (*u/4)%2) Here the argument seems to be the sum of a string literal and an integer. What's happening here? Is th first character of the string literal being cast to an integer before the addition occurs? Cheers, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- | Dept. Computer Engineering, Curtin University of Technology / o ---- | Perth. Western Australia. / / / / / | Internet: North_TJ@cc.curtin.edu.au / / / / / | Bitnet: North_TJ%cc.curtin.edu.au@cunyvm.bitnet | UUCP: uunet!munnari.oz!cc.curtin.edu.au!North_TJ _--_|\ |------------------------------------------------------------ / \ |I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... -->\_.--._/ |I want to achieve it through not dying! v | -- Woody Allen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------