On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 07:40:32AM +0100, John Ollason wrote:
So who uses Pascal now? Who teaches Pascal now? Anybody interested in discussing these matters?
Most languages are bound to die out, or get transformed so much that they are no longer comparable to their ancestors.
I still teach (Object) Pascal in our introductory programming courses for Computer Science students at Eindhoven University of Technology. But I must admit that there is much pressure to move to e.g. Java (which seems to be the language of choice for teaching programming basics to students of other departments; with an exception that Mechanical Engineering here has opted for Python).
Our students use Delphi with Object Pascal (we have a campus license), but our automatic checker http://peach.win.tue.nl/ uses FreePascal (in Delphi mode).
I myself have been using gpc for some scientific projects (e.g. solving the game of Yahtzee: http://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/misc/yahtzee/).
Pascal is also still used in the International Olympiad of Informatics http://olympiads.win.tue.nl/ioi/ (next to C and C++; no Java there, yet). It must be noted that the percentage of Pascal users is significantly higher among the top scoring contestants. Especially in Central and Eastern Europe, Pascal is still the favorite language, and particularly so for contests (precisely because it offers more protection against mistakes).
But I must admit that there is much pressure to move to e.g. Java, both in our institute and in the olympiad. The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest for university students has recently abandonned Pascal (to the chagrin of some; they allow C, C++, Java).
Personally, I don't feel that Java is a better choice than Pascal. My colleagues sometimes agree, but then counter that Java is more useful for a student's career, and that it is more "mainstream" (i.e. more generally known, so better as a common language to exchange ideas, and there are more tools, books, etc. to support the use and teaching of the language).
On the other hand, I also feel that Pascal has a number of shortcomings, which are hard to get rid of.
So far my musings,
Tom