User:LFiveZeroFive: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 16:13, 8 April 2008

About

My name is Lars Olson, from Alberta, Canada.

I contribute to mainly computer science related topics on the Wikipedia, and sometimes other interesting topics.

Nickname

My nick name is L505.

Websites

I a run a website called Z505.COM

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 ==About==
+My name is Lars Olson, from Alberta, Canada.
-I will fill more of this information in soon. I am a programmer who has played with Ruby, C, C++, D, PHP, and Modern Pascal including the Freepascal and Delphi tools. I have invented a programming language called Qompute, which is a terse strongly typed and compiled language with features similar to D, C, C++, and Modern Pascal. As of 2007 I have not released the compiler and the language specification is being updated and changed during initial design stages.
+I contribute to mainly computer science related topics on the Wikipedia, and sometimes other interesting topics.
 ==Nickname==
+My nick name is L505.
-My nick name is L505 however the wikipedia wouldn't let me sign up with it because "lsos" was too similar to "L505". Interesting.. must be artificial intelligence.
 ==Websites==
 I a run a website called [http://z505.com Z505.COM]
-==Is the most horrible language really Pascal==
-I do not advocate standard Pascal without separate compilation but feel that standard Pascal still served its purpose to teach us what to take with us and what to leave behind. C took some of Pascal with it (enumerations, typedef, etc). Modern Pascal took some of C with it too, including more flexible access to pointers and compatible calling convention abilities. Neither modern pascal or modern C are superior, as some people think.
-Ruby and Python take many ideas from Pascal and Modula, and Java takes ideas from Pascal too. Did you know that the Author of Vi and the founder of Sun Microsystems created Vi first in Pascal, and he worked extensively on Pascal driven machines? Lua also borrows a lot from Pascal.
-Standard Pascal served its purpose as a useful example of structured programming, just as C served its purpose as an example of showing where looser structured programming can be helpful. C also served its purpose by showing us that no one wishes or cares to allocate memory for strings, and Pascal also served its purpose by showing us that ansistrings need to be invented instead of shortstrings limited to 255 characters.
-==Both Standard C and Standard Pascal are closed shut and finished==
-C is a closed case since pointers to chars are enforced, and anything beyond a toy program must be designed with hundreds of pointers spread everywhere throughout the program.
-Digital Mars D is headed in the right direction. C++ is too complicated.
-C is simple but needs to move away from the idea that 'pointers are enough for strings and arrays'. A lot of people work with strings of text daily, and the idea that pointers to chars are enough is ludicrous - just as ludicrous as Standard Pascal. One should be able to use pointers but they should not be enforced as the only way to build real programs. The C language is closed because of the purist pointer view that arrays and strings must be pointers. In C, one should be able to use pointers to chars when the need to, but enforcing them as the only built in string type is just as bad as Standard Pascal enforcing its ludicrous restrictions. C also taught us that although macro preprocessors are useful, their use should be basically discouraged unless exceptional circumstances exist. Modern Pascal compilers have preprocessors and are rarely used but still available.
-Standard Pascal is a closed language because of the fact that it does not have separate units, and it does not have enough libraries available, and it does not have ansistrings past 255 chars.
-Until somebody changes the C language to have proper string types in them (such as Digital Mars D) and until someone changes the Standard Pascal language to have modern extensions, both of them are closed shut and useful only for unmaintainable spaghetti programming. C lacks units, modules, or namespaces and encourages one to use global procedures that pollute the namespace (there are no such thing as private procedures in C). C++  offers namespaces but C++ is a complicated kludge (hence my comments on Digital Mars D being a better choice).