sbw@naucse.UUCP (Steve Wampler) (03/03/89)
We will be teaching a low-level programming course using Pascal
on MacIntoshes in the fall. I'm looking for recommendations
for Pascals to consider for use by the students. The constraints
are:
(1) EASE of USE. These are NOT sophisticated users. It
is most likely they have never used a computer before
and even if they have, have not used a Mac. The
Pascal should be runable off a harddisk with student
files kept on floppies. For this reason, I'd prefer
it if the Pascal could be obtained with a site license.
(2) Good Debugging. It would be most helpful if the Pascal
had a debugging mode where students could single step
through the source, examine variables, etc.
(3) Suitable documentation. The Pascal should have accurate,
clear documentation. Ideally, it would come packaged
with a good textbook.
(4) Cheap. If we cannot get a site license at a reasonable price,
then it should be inexpensive for the students to purchase.
(Note that unless (3) is met well, the students will have
to buy *both* the Pascal *and* a good text, so a $50 Pascal
is likely unacceptable unless it includes a good text or
can be gotten reasonably with a site license.
(5) Must run in Mac+'s with 1 Meg memory.
Please email me responses, I'll post a summary if there is both interest
and sufficient responses. Thanks!
--
Steve Wampler
{....!arizona!naucse!sbw}rdsesq@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rob Snevely) (03/04/89)
I would reccomend LightSpeed Pascal. It is the system I switched to from turbo to learn Pascal and the Mac. It has a great debugger.And I am pretty sure that you might be able to get a site-licence. Stanford's cs 106 class intro to programming in pascal has switched from Mainframes to Mac's running LSP. They also have a preety good general tutorial called Just Enough Pascal. It covers the basics of pascal programming and some of the basics of the Mac. It doesn't get in to handles and pointers, but does discuss array's, functions, procedures, var, units, (general stuff). This is my opinion, I don't work for them but I use there product and am a satisfied customer. It even includes Object Pascal support but no MaccApp-like stuff for it yet. So take a look, It might be worth your while. uses disclaimer; rob rdsesq@jessica.stanford.edu
stecker@unc.cs.unc.edu (Melanie Stecker) (03/04/89)
I have found LightSpeed Pascal to be easy for students to use. The "pretty printing", in which it handles all indentation and places all keywords in boldface, relieves the student from dealing with formatting their programs. This allows them to see which lines LSP interprets as being in any given compound statement, and lines up matching begins and ends - handy for beginning programmers. The debugging facilities are great. Its interpretive quality disallows simple syntax errors. Compile time errors are pointed out with an appropriate thumbs down and error message. There is an observe window and trace/step facility that works well, esp., I found, when debugging routines using pointer variables. The manual, naturally, leaves some to be desired. The newly released version makes reference to "Inside MacIntosh", so beware. A problem we encountered, though, was that the new, and only supported version, version 2.0, requires, I believe, 2 floppy drives and 1 meg memory. It sounds like you are equipped to handle 2.0, but check into it. Good Luck! -MS
rpandey@mist.cs.orst.edu (Rajeev Pandey) (03/07/89)
Here at Oregon State, we use Lightspeed Pascal (as a couple of previous postings have discussed the merits of doing so, I won't go into it). As a text for the course, we use Cooper & Clancy "Oh! Pascal", along with the supplement "Oh! THINK's Lightspeed Pascal" by Beekman & Johnson (this book adapts "Oh! Pascal" to the Macs and Lightspeed Pascal chapter-by- chapter). I've taught CS 211 (Introduction to Computer Science) three times from this combination, and it works quite well. -------- Dept. of Computer Science | Rajeev "Raju" Pandey Computer Science Bldg. 100 | Oregon State University | Internet: rpandey@cs.orst.edu Corvallis, OR 97331-3902 | UUCP: tektronix!orstcs!rpandey (503) 754-3273 U.S.A. | UUCP: hplabs!hp-pcd!orstcs!rpandey