| Richard 2007-03-14, 6:55 pm |
| On Mar 15, 1:56 am, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashw...@removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote:
> "Richard" <rip...@Azonic.co.nz> wrote in message
>
>
> Yes, a fair question...
>
> Pascal certainly has credentials as a teaching language but it is hard to
> assess the extent of the commercial user base.
>
> Quick search on GOOGLE gave the following:
>
> Delphi Pascal -> around 2,000,000 hits
> COBOL -> around 10,000,000 hits
> C# -> around 65,000,000 hits
>
> (This could mean absolutely nothing, of course, but there are no hard
> statistics I can find that are credible and unbiased regarding the user base
> for any of the above.)
>
> I suspect the problem was not with the intrinsic quality of Pascal or Delphi
> as languages (I know from nodding acquaintance with both, that they are at
> least as good as other languages, and they support OO and Visual
> programming), but rather from the fact that Borland was unable to really
> market them.
The point I was making is that there is a 'fashion' in languages. In
the 70s BASIC was where many systems were written. Not just Apple II
and BBC but DEC systems were written in BASIC.
In the 80s it was Pascal, and especially Turbo Pascal, but many other
varieties. Then Visual Basic, then C++, then Java, now C#. Next year
it may be something else.
> Allusion is made to both of these at the start of the interview. As
> Hejlsberg was behind these, and C#, it seems he has done much better since
> moving to MicroSoft... :-)
Microsoft wanted a hammer to beat Java with so they 'bought' Anders
from Borland.
> From my own involvement in C# I know that MS are pushing it quite hard and
> making it very easy for people to acquire, learn and use it. They are
> targeting amateur programmers and kids who are interested, as well as
> professionals.
>
> It was particularly interesting to me to see in this interview that C# is
> NOT perceived internally (at least not by the two people in the interview)
> as the wonder language du jour you could be forgiven for thinking it is from
> MS marketing. Hejlsberg sees it as a good framework for functional
> programming and implementing Lamba expressions and expression trees, rather
> than as a finished product.
One of the alleged reasons that Vista took so long was that the
released Vista is a quick rewrite based on 2003 kernal with some UI
'enhancements' and a bunch of bling copied from Apple OSX. This was
necessary when it became obvious that they would never get the product
they had been working on since before XP would ever work. This was
Cairo, a rewrite of Windows to run on top of the .NET3 CLI. Allegedly
written in C# it was supposed to be able to be ported to various
processors including the Cell of XBox 360 so it could be used to make
a Microsoft XPC.
I think that MS's confidence in C# may have suffered as they are now
talking about 'the next Windows' as being continuation of Vista.
> For my own part, I am now gaining facility with it and I am satisfied it is
> a great replacement for COBOL and a very useful language in its own right. I
> have passed the point where, when new application requirements are raised,
> I reach for COBOL... These days it is C# and DotNET almost exclusively for
> any new development. As I mentioned elsewhere, I think the IDE (Visual
> Studio 2005) had much to do with this. It is just quicker, easier, and less
> error prone than writing COBOL was.
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