Ralph D. Wilson II wrote: > So you consider VB to be more readable than Pascal because of the Begin . . > . End statements? > Funny, I find it to be extremely helpful, when combined with appropriate > indentation (which, I also find to frequently an unknown concept among VB > programmers). By the way, you have also demonstrated a complete > misunderstanding of the use of the begin . . . end block because of your > reference to the "optional END statement" . . . "end" is NOT optional if > you have a "begin".
I wondered about that too, I'm not aware of ANY dialect of Pascal that permits a "begin" without an "end". > And, you're whining about having to "forward define everything"? So, you > don't write organized and thought out code, you just want to write "stream > of consciousness" code. Golly, it must be so demanding to actually > ORGANIZE your thoughts before you start writing. Yeah, defining things in > the top of the function/procedure/application seems like a drag but it also > makes things more readable because you know where to look to find the > declaration of variables/constants and, therefore, it is easier to figure > out what their scope is. Forward declarations of functions and procedures > makes it easier to know what all is in the bloody unit/module. too. The requirement that everything must be defined before it's used also permits much faster and more efficient compilers. > As for the colon equal/equal thing . . . > do you really have so little time that the extra key stroke is going to be > a strain. You're right, that IS nit-picky. This is a common complaint, but I (for one) greatly appreciate the fact that I learned Pascal as my first programming language and thus am very cognizant of the difference between assignment and an equals comparision and I like that Pascal insists on the distinction by using different symbols. The C/C++/Java/C# solution of double equals (==) for equivalence and single equals (=) for assignment is problematic, IMO, because: 1. this is a counter-intuitive overload of the general meaning of equals in normal writing, which leads to frequent mistakes and 2. in the C sequence languages, assignment is legal in many of the same places an equivalence comparison is; so mistakenly using single equals in place of a double equals in expressions is often sytactically legal even if not what was intended, which leads to hard-to-find bugs. Any VB pundit might be interested to know that original BASIC actually more clearly made the assigment vs. equals distinction: the original syntax for an assignment required the "LET" keyword, but that was made optional over the years. > My only sorrow about Delphi is that some damned fool bought the "dot-net" > fever and screwed up the tool. IMO it's useful to be able to target different platforms (I really wish Borland would come up with a Delphi for Mac, or at least, get Kylix to generate non-Intel binaries); but it's imprudent to do so at the expense of the power that already exists. Anyhoo, much as I hate to say it, Microsoft has made noises that the Win API is on the way out and .NET is the future, so standard Delphi's viable lifetime may be limited. Stephen Posey [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk
