Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-i Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:Pucc-I:ags From: ags@pucc-i (Seaman) Newsgroups: net.lang.mod2 Subject: Re: Pascal vs. Modula-2 Message-ID: <385@pucc-i> Date: Fri, 3-Aug-84 11:22:40 EDT Article-I.D.: pucc-i.385 Posted: Fri Aug 3 11:22:40 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 4-Aug-84 23:55:03 EDT References: <8600013@iuvax.UUCP> Organization: Purdue University Computing Center Lines: 28 Not to nitpick, but C. J. Lo quoted me as saying: > Despite Pascal's short commings as a general purpose programming > language, I still believe that it is one of the best languages to > teach beginning programmers. Pascal is easier to learn than Modula, > and once it is learned the step to Modula will be easy. I believe it was Ian Kaplan who said that. I teach an introductory Pascal course and I would welcome the opportunity to teach Modula-2 as a first language. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find anyone in an introductory programming course who hasn't already been exposed to BASIC, so I don't believe we should worry about people being corrupted by Pascal. I would just like to point out (since no one has mentioned it yet in this newsgroup) that the August, 1984 issue of Byte is devoted almost entirely to Modula-2. In what I have had time to read so far, I have noticed several inaccuracies which seem to indicate that some of the authors don't really understand the language. One example: it was claimed that sets could not be larger than 16 bits (on 16-bit machines). Apparently the author didn't know that you can declare set types other than BITSET. Several other points raised in the magazine seem to be worthy of discussion, but I haven't had a chance to look up references yet. Maybe this weekend. -- Dave Seaman My hovercraft is no longer full of ..!pur-ee!pucc-i:ags eels (thanks to my confused cat).