yeah.... I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done while I'm out pounding pavement. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal. :( Any help is appreciated, Thanks James KB1FJQ
I have an old book on the USCD P-system... :) -- Charles R. Anderson <cra@wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886
Hi desdinova@soupforare.net wrote:
yeah.... I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done while I'm out pounding pavement. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal. :(
Any help is appreciated,
I have a couple of Pascal books (forget which specifically, I'm up at the cottage and they are down in Mass) which you are welcome to borrow as long as I have a fighting chance of getting them back some time (no rush at all). If you are interested, let me know fairly soon since I shall be coming down to Shrewsbury tomorrow (Friday evening) for the weekend (the kids in our house are coming up here). doug
Madness is right. Use your time on something more usefull such as ANYTHING ELSE :) python, perl, tcl, ruby(I've heard great things bout ruby), If your a beginner, i'd say learn C. On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 desdinova@soupforare.net wrote:
yeah.... I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done while I'm out pounding pavement. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal. :(
Any help is appreciated, Thanks James KB1FJQ
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At 07/25/2002 09:03 PM (Thursday), desdinova@soupforare.net wrote:
I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done while I'm out pounding pavement. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section?
The Micro Center book section (in Cambridge) has probably the best selection. Still not good, though, for Pascal books. Be aware that the historical Pascal you may have been exposed to as a student in the past has changed considerably over the years. Borland has "owned" Pascal for over a decade and defined more extensions than there were original language constructs. The current "Delphi Pascal" is far closer to C++ than any other single language and is as completely object oriented as C++ is. This is the "Pascal" of Kylix and is a truly useful language since it retains much of the useful type-safe, single pass attributes of the original Pascal effort. Even with the rich features now available you will not find a faster compile-test-fix-compile cycle anywhere for a fully compiled language. All the other current open source efforts are trying for compatibility with this de facto standard. Therefore, if you find a book on Kylix you should do well learning about the whole group.
(thanks for the other replies, I just picked one) On 26 Jul 2002 at 8:03, Doug Chamberlin wrote:
At 07/25/2002 09:03 PM (Thursday), desdinova@soupforare.net wrote:
I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, >and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done >while I'm out pounding pavement. >Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section?
The Micro Center book section (in Cambridge) has probably the best selection. Still not good, though, for Pascal books.
<SNIP about borland> My intent is to learn TP(BP), not ISO-pascal, and poke around in delphi on the way.
All the other current open source efforts are trying for compatibility with this de facto standard. Therefore, if you find a book on Kylix you should do well learning about the whole group.
Yeah.
At 09:03 PM 7/25/2002, James wrote:
yeah.... I'm trying to teach myself pascal. What with the new release of Freepascal, and what with Delphi6/Kylix being out, I figure I should get something done while I'm out pounding pavement. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal. :(
The question is, why Pascal? Delphi does C++ too (C++ Builder uses the same development environment)... In any event, the book for Pascal is by Nicholas Wirth (the creator of the language). It is a small black covered book that looks more like a journal than a text. If memory serves, it is called something like "Data Structures and Algorithms using Pascal." I taught from this book some 18 years ago at BU... I liken it to K&R on C and C++ - dense, but very useful. Having no idea what your background is, If you are interested in "tooling up" but what to do it slowly, there are some other ways to go. The two languages that top my list are Python and Java. Java is very popular and gives you all the OOP concepts you would need, and it has the advantage that it doesn't suffer from the issues C++ does (specifically, backwards compatibility with C). Having said that, it is very C/C++ like in syntax. The book for Java is "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel. He also has a book under the title of "Thinking in C++". Python is interesting. Python is often used as "executable pseudocode" and, depending on what you are going after, it may be the ticket. Then again, Java on your resume will get you hired before Python will. ;-) As a total aside, you might also want to have a look at Martin Fowler's "UML Distilled". UML is very useful for programming and Martin is an expert. I know him from my days at OMG (a standards organization) where he worked on the committee that dealt with UML. A very fast talking Brit with a marvelous sense of humor. His book is the book for UML. Regards, Steve
At 09:03 PM 7/25/2002, James wrote:
I'm trying to teach myself pascal. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal.
I dug around to find the name of the book store near Webster square that I like. It turns out to be "Another Story" at 1145 Main St. Stafford is around the corner, so I guess that's what you meant. There are several other used book stores in town (check the phone book), but most of them have pitiful computer sections. The people who run book stores seem to be totally unqualified to distinguish timeless classics of CS from obsolete manufacturer's litter-ature.
From: "Stephen C. Daukas" <stephen@daukas.com>
The question is, why Pascal?
No, that was not the question. Since he asked about Pascal, I will refrain from raving on about how he should learn Algol68 and Haskell and numerical analysis and Russian (though of course he should).
Delphi does C++ too... In any event, the book for Pascal is by Nicholas Wirth (the creator of the language). It is a small black covered book that looks more like a journal than a text. If memory serves, it is called something like "Data Structures and Algorithms using Pascal." I taught from this book some 18 years ago at BU... I liken it to K&R on C and C++ - dense, but very useful.
You may be conflating: Jensen, K. and Wirth, N. "PASCAL User Manual and Report", Springer-Verlag (1975), the main reference definition of the language, which has been published under several covers, but usually some variant of the typical Springer silver grey, with "Algorithm + Data Structures = Programs" by Wirth alone, which is an typical undergraduate data structures textbook using Pascal (or something like it) for the examples. This book would not be much use for learning Pascal. The User Manual and Report should be required reading for anyone who is at all serious about Pascal. It is indeed like the Kernighan and Ritchie book called "The C Programming Language", in that it is the definitive description of the basic language before a dozen people and corporations embraced and extended it. I don't think K&R ever wrote anything about C++, that is Stroustrup's baby (or bastard). -- Keith
At 07:06 PM 8/4/2002, Keith wrote:
At 09:03 PM 7/25/2002, James wrote:
[snip]
From: "Stephen C. Daukas" <stephen@daukas.com>
The question is, why Pascal?
No, that was not the question. Since he asked about Pascal, I will refrain from raving on about how he should learn Algol68 and Haskell and numerical analysis and Russian (though of course he should).
I didn't realize you were the self-appointed question cop! Regarding the rest of your comment, you should have refrained - you missed my point.
Delphi does C++ too... In any event, the book for Pascal is by Nicholas Wirth (the creator of the language). It is a small black covered book that looks more like a journal than a text. If memory serves, it is called something like "Data Structures and Algorithms using Pascal." I taught from this book some 18 years ago at BU... I liken it to K&R on C and C++ - dense, but very useful.
You may be conflating:
No - I know the book of which I speak and you can learn the language from it. But, your original point is moot because he has since made it clear he needs a book on Borland's version of Pascal, which isn't Pascal proper.
I don't think K&R ever wrote anything about C++, that is Stroustrup's baby (or bastard).
Correct.
participants (8)
-
Charles R. Anderson -
desdinova＠soupforare.net -
Doug Chamberlin -
doug waud -
Josh Huber -
Karl Hiramoto -
Keith Wright -
Stephen C. Daukas