[Coco] The Programmer's quick guide to the languages wasRe: OS9 Pascal

[Willard Goosey]

>Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:14:47 -0400
>From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net>

>>   * Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
>
>In my experience it won't let you do anything because no matter how you write 
>it, its an obscure syntax error.

Heh.  Well, as a teaching tool at least it teaches you how to look up
obscure syntax. ;-)

Gotta agree with you though, esp. closely-compliant compilers like
OS-9 Pascal.  The last couple of versions of Turbo Pascal were almost
usable...

>>   * APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out
>>     how to do it in fewer characters.
>
>Yes, one should be sufficient.

"Every program has at least one bug, and can be reduced in size by one
instruction.  From this we can deduce that every program can be
reduced to one instruction that doesn't work."

>From the fortune file.
>
>You can do that in System 36 rpg III too, but it comes back in only 42 hours, 
>with a plaster cast, subjected to surgery that makes a mirror image out of 
>it, and renamed to 'shinbone'.

:-)ROTFL

>>   * Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in
>>     all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.
>
>Apt.  Justifiable too. :)

I missed Access, somewhere. But if they're talking about database
systems, the CoCo has a port of Sculptor.  From what little I've used
it, it's  a cross between BASIC and dBase III.  I haven't used it
enough to make a snarky comment like these about it, though.

>But in assembler, the foot you must invent is wearing a bulletproof vest 
>because you wrote it that way.  One could also write it so that it has a hole 
>which exactly fits the bullet, my favorite technique. :)

Actually, what scares me about assembler is having to modify someone
else's foot. 

>Good for a chuckle with my first coffee of the day, thanks.

Heh, no problem.  there are other versions, too, describing operating
systems, etc.  Heck, I even made one up for all the various computers
in my house. :-)

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
"I've never been to Contempt!  Isn't that somewhere in New Mexico?"
   --- Yacko