[comp.lang.pascal] Pascal text

parker@mars.njit.edu (bruce parker cis fac) (07/19/89)

Students at NJIT use an IBM-PC clone and will shortly be using Turbo Pascal 5.0.
In general, they do NOT have the Borland manuals (at least as far as I can
tell).

My problem is this:  while getting the Borland documentation to the students
is important, the books are lousy for teaching.  They are (as should be
expected) written by committee.  I need to find a decent textbook for
Turbo Pascal which covers topics typical for a second course in programming,
e.g., more advanced features of Turbo Pascal such as dynamic structures,
recursion, abstract data types using units, as well as some sort of
overview or reference level guide to using Turbo 5.0 or 5.5 Pascal's
editor, the make and build functions, and the debugger.

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
Bruce Parker
305 Weston Hall					(201) 596-3369
Computer and Information Science Department 	parker@mars.njit.edu
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, New Jersey  07102
Bruce Parker
305 Weston Hall					(201) 596-3369
Computer and Information Science Department 	parker@mars.njit.edu
New Jersey Institute of Technology

bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) (08/12/89)

In article <650@njitgw.njit.edu> parker@mars.njit.edu (bruce parker cis fac) writes:
>Students at NJIT use an IBM-PC clone and will shortly be using Turbo Pascal 5.0.
>In general, they do NOT have the Borland manuals (at least as far as I can
>tell).
>
>My problem is this:  while getting the Borland documentation to the students
>is important, the books are lousy for teaching.
>
>Any suggestions?

Borland's manuals are _documentation_, not texts.  GET THEM!

Turbo Pascal, while a semi-user-friendly programming environment, is
nonetheless a typically misfeature-bloated Pascal implementation.
Without the actual manual, students will beat themselves silly trying
to track down bugs and to write routines for which library
procedures exist.

Further, these kids aren't going to be using Turbo all their lives.

Get a book on generic Pascal, and plenty of copies of the Turbo docs.

				--Blair
				  "Then chuck them all and
				   teach C, fer gosh sakes..."

reggie@dinsdale.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (08/14/89)

In article <3725@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <650@njitgw.njit.edu> parker@mars.njit.edu (bruce parker cis fac) writes:
>>Students at NJIT use an IBM-PC clone and will shortly be using Turbo Pascal 5.0.
>>In general, they do NOT have the Borland manuals (at least as far as I can
>>tell).

   Right, in fact most of the instructors don't have them either :-)

   I attended NJIT in the mid to later 70's and taught there for several
years in the evenings in the mid 80's.  I was there when they switched 
over to the PCs and Turbo.  Prior to that they had been running on a
Univac from terminals.  When *I* attended, we ran cards on the Interdata 32 :-)

>>My problem is this:  while getting the Borland documentation to the students
>>is important, the books are lousy for teaching.

>>Any suggestions?

>Borland's manuals are _documentation_, not texts.  GET THEM!

   Yes, they are docs.  They should be sufficient along with any general
text on Pascal as Blair points out.

>Turbo Pascal, while a semi-user-friendly programming environment, is
>nonetheless a typically misfeature-bloated Pascal implementation.

   Yup.  However, to be fair I *do* think that the system does enough
to cover up all the gorry details of how does one run a program on the
particular system that one is on to allow the students to concentrate
on what they are supposed to learn ---> Pascal.

   At first, I didn't think much of using PCs and Turbo.  However, after
witnessing it in action one semester I changed my mind.  There were three
PC labs filled with almost 50 PCs each.  Also, students had PCs at home.
Availability was quite high.  This had never been the case before when
using a terminal.  In my day, we never used the terminals because there
were so few of them available.  One could only sign up for a one hour
block of time.  So cards were the most available means of accessign the
machines.

   Once the student mastered the hideous editor, everything else was rather
simple.  I do feel that somewhere down the road there needs to be a switch
over to a more powerful implementation of Pascal.  The students will quickly
outgrow the need for the training wheels that Turbo provides them :-)

>Without the actual manual, students will beat themselves silly trying
>to track down bugs and to write routines for which library
>procedures exist.

   Instructors too!  I had to *BEG* to get a manual when I was there.

>Further, these kids aren't going to be using Turbo all their lives.

   Bingo.  See above.

>Get a book on generic Pascal, and plenty of copies of the Turbo docs.

   Right.  Grogono (Spelling?) has always been my favorite.  When I was
last at NJIT the text was Dale and Orshalick.  In my mind this was a
far too simplistic book for a technical university.



George W. Leach					AT&T Paradyne 
(uunet|att)!pdn!reggie				Mail stop LG-133
Phone: 1-813-530-2376				P.O. Box 2826
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bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (BOSTATER,Scott) (08/15/89)

In article <6499@pdn.paradyne.com>, reggie@dinsdale.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) writes:
> 
> >Turbo Pascal, while a semi-user-friendly programming environment, is
> >nonetheless a typically misfeature-bloated Pascal implementation.
> 
>    Yup.  However, to be fair I *do* think that the system does enough
> to cover up all the gorry details of how does one run a program on the
> particular system that one is on to allow the students to concentrate
> on what they are supposed to learn ---> Pascal.
> 
  Yep, let them learn about the details of compling in a complier class. Let
  them learn about pascal in a pascal class. When I took my first pascal 
  classes, we were given batch files that would do the compling, linking,
  generation of a list file, run the program and print the results. The
  batch file was approx. 40 lines long. In TP all I have to do is press
  cntrl-F9. In a begining programming class I'ld rather have my students
  learning how to develope algorithms, not how to fight the compiler/sytem.

>          I do feel that somewhere down the road there needs to be a switch
> over to a more powerful implementation of Pascal.  The students will quickly
> outgrow the need for the training wheels that Turbo provides them :-)
> 
  What limitations? I've used TP to write general purpose MS-DOS utilities,
  radar modeling software, implement dsp algorithms, generate high 
  resolution graphics (monitors and printers), and more. I haven't found
  any application where TP *wouldn't* let me do what I wanted to do. This
  has been a constant source of disscussion/argument between myself and the
  "C weenies" where I work. Maybe I'm just too dumb to know what I can't do :)

> >Without the actual manual, students will beat themselves silly trying
> >to track down bugs and to write routines for which library
> >procedures exist.
> 
>    Instructors too!  I had to *BEG* to get a manual when I was there.

  Buy a copy. At Georgia Tech we've got purchasing agreement with Borland.
  $45 for TP5.0, $55 for TP5.5, $15 for upgrade of 5.0 to 5.5, $55 for
  TC 2.0, $48.0 for TASM/TDEBUG. If your school doesn't have as good a deal,
  maybe you should find out why. At $45 for TP5.0 there no excuse for not
  having the manual. I've paid a whole lot more for standard text books
  that were totally useless and you can use TP as long as you use an MSDOS
  machine. (wheter that's good or bad, I'll leave to comp.sys.nit-pick :)) 

  BTW, have you tried the cntrl-F1 key? It'll give context sensitve help. As 
  you compile and reach an error, pressing cntrl-F1 can usually show you
  the syntax of what you're trying to do. If you want to know what TP 
  *standard* :) library routines exist, you can find them using the same
  context sensitve help. 

> 
> >Further, these kids aren't going to be using Turbo all their lives.
> 
>    Bingo.  See above.

  Regreatably, I wish everyone liked TP as much as I do. Unfortuneatly, the
  world seldom knows whats best for it :). I can compile 7500 lines of code
  in 11 seconds in TP5.0 (with a $5000 Dell 310).  On a $50,000 Masscomp 
  computer running unix, it takes 2.5 minutes to compile 2500 lines of C.
  Granted this isn't fair comparison, but the ratio of bang-for-the-buck
  makes me cry.

-- 
Scott Bostater      GTRI/RAIL/RAD   (Ga. Tech)
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him"  -Ps 62.1
uucp:     ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!bb16
Internet: bb16@prism.gatech.edu

kim@kim.misemi (Kim Letkeman) (08/16/89)

Borland's (and anyone else's) manuals are reference materials. They
allow one to relate one's knowledge of a language to a particular
implementation of that language. I.e. they allow to you figure out how
to accomplish a particular task in a particular implementation of a
language.

They are not a tool for teaching someone how to program in a language.
From your query's tone, it sounds like you are merely attempting to
expose these people to pascal. Why not do them a big favour and teach
them something about how to program very well while using pascal as
the tool?

Get "Software Tools in Pascal" by Kernighan and Plauger.

Kim



-- 

Kim Letkeman         ...uunet!mitel!spock!kim