Re: pascal system

[ben yates <anoneds@netscape.net>]

On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 12:42:55 +0000, Paul Schlyter wrote:

> In article <kNOdnWuedvOlOR3ZnZ2dnUVZ_vmdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
> Alex Freed  <alexf@mirrow.com> wrote:
> 
>> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> 
>>> Yes - an implementation of UCSD Pascal was integrated in the Apple Pascal
>>> system.  It was a compiler, IDE, OS, file system -- all integrated.
>> 
>> IMHO "bundled" is a better term than "integrated". Now the Turbo Pascal
>> was integrated. Just like modern development environments with combined
>> editor and compiler.
>> 
>> UCSD Pascal just came with its own OS and incompatible filesystem.
> 
> True --- Turbo Pascal didn't integrate its own OS, which was a clear
> advantage.  To summarize: Turbo Pascal was better than Apple Pascal in
> almost every respect.  Anyone who can think of even one advantage
> Apple Pascal had over Turbo Pascal?

Yes - Turbo Pascal bastardized the standards. UCSD wasn't a strict
follower, however. But if you compare most UCSD programs vs. Turbo
programs, many Turbo Pascal programs are mere shells for in-line asm,
others have non-standard programming constructs, etc.

I don't know about Apple Pascal, but the UCSD I used supported concurrent
processes, had an assembler (no in-line asm for me!), and pretty decent
memory management. Not remembering too many details from my Turbo Pascal
days, I can't enumerate any more.

The two reasons I disliked UCSD, which is pretty much the reason for its
failure, is its slow speed and use of a proprietary file system. Silly,
since disk formats of the day weren't standardized to allow disk swapping.
They should've used a system like many Forths of the day used, which was
blocks on top of the native file system allowing Forth to have access to
the native file system through block reads or through Forth words that
utilized the underlying OS. I never _could_ get UCSD to access the
underlying OS on my system. Had to use cheesy/buggy conversion programs to
 move stuff over.