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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).