Those days will never die. (Turbo Pascal 7.0 for DOS)

Member Name: thanatoszane

Product:	Turbo Pascal 7.0 for DOS
Date:	24/07/05 (10450 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good learning language

Disadvantages: Outdated, strict.

It may seem strange to write a review of something as old as this, but I was recently reminded of the existance of Turbo Pascal when I dug through some of my old source code.

I must stress, I detest Pascal (purely for its picky syntax), but I will try to be honest about the benefits the language has.

Turbo Pascal was released by Borland, that good old company that also released TurboC and TurboBasic, as well as in more recent times 'C Builder' and other similar products for Windows.

Borland are a pretty nice company. You can educational versions of their product from their web site (www.borland.com) for free. They even have a software 'museum' where they release their oldest full versions for free, and write about how the products have changed.



=====But, anyway, what is Turbo Pascal?=====

Turbo Pascal 'combines the simplicity of Apples Object Pascal with the power of C' according to the Borland web site.

Or, put simply, it is an Object Oriented programming language that is both simple and powerful.

Back when this first came out, Object Oriented Programming was around, but hadn't really taken off as a mainstream thing. Most people still coded the old-fashioned way using 'Procedures' and 'Sub-Routines'.

The old way can work, but for large programs it can get confusing. You end up with hundreds, or thousands, of routines each doing one small thing, and you can't always remember what they all do.

With Object-Oriented programming things are easier to manage - you create an Object, and set its Properties, then give it Methods it can use.

I'll use the traditional example of a toaster:

It has Properties that you can set:

Lets make this a toaster of the colour silver, material metal, and it is currently not making toast so it is cool.


It also has several Methods: -

Add-toast, eject-toast and set-temperature.


Hopefully you can see how that is fairly simple to remember and understand. You couldn't get as easily confused between toaster.set-temperature and microwave.set-temperature as you could get confused between similar things in an old-fashioned procedural language.


=====OK, So Pascal Has Objects, What Else?=====

Well, Pascal is a very good learning language. It isn't quite as simple as English but it is as close as you are likely to get outside of Cobol or Basic.

To give some examples, procedures are opened with a 'begin' and closed with an 'end;'. If you want to print a line of text on the screen you use 'writeline'. How much easier can you get?

Actually, it isn't that easy really. Pascal is picky, really picky. You need every quotation mark and semi colon in exactly the right place. Even some white space (spaces or lines between bits of code) can cause problems, and if you get your variable types confused then I take pity on you.

Thats part of the reason why this is such a good learning language. Especially today when there are scripting languages such as Perl out there that will trust you and do crazy things like try to add 'abc' to 123 without batting an eyelid, it is good to get into a habit of double checking your code and making sure that you get everything right.

One good thing about Pascal (at least compared to modern languages) is that it compiles (makes the code into something you can actually run on your computer) the code you write *fast*. I hate Visual Studio sometimes because when a project gets to any decent size you have enough time to go make a coffee, and wait for it to cool a little, before the compile has finished.


=====So if I learn Turbo Pascal I'll be fine?=====

Well, not exactly, it is a good starting language, but this version of Pascal is very old, and is designed to run in DOS, not Windows. It may be annoying to get it to run under Windows XP (I can do it without problems, but I know people that have difficulty.).

Also, the world of programming has changed a lot since that version. Pascal is still used these days, as is a newer variant called Delphi that most Pascal programmers should be able to pick up without difficulty.

For most things though, C/C++/C# or Java are flavour of the month. I would recommend starting on Pascal then picking one of the above and transfering your skills to one of those.

=====Summary and Useability=====

Turbo Pascal is a nice starter language. If you have a very old computer then you should still be able to get it to run without problems.

The interface, something I haven't mentioned up to now since I've been focusing on the language, is clunky and archaic. If you have never used an old DOS application before you may be slightly put off by it, but stick with it. There are only a few commands you will really need regularly and you should learn them quickly and be using it like a pro. If you are an old DOS veteran then the memories will bring a fond tear to your eye.

It is not suitable for developing modern day applications, but it should be relatively easy to transfer the basics from Turbo Pascal to another, newer language. If you learn Pascal you will have a good, strong foundation to build upon.

If you already know another language such as Basic, and wish to learn about OO programming, then you could use Pascal for this since the syntax is similar enough that you shouldn't get too confused. Personally I would advise against this though and suggest you move straight on to C++, unless your end goal is to be a Delphi programmer.

Since Turbo Pascal is available as a free download it doesn't hurt to try it out. If you want to learn then what better way is there than trying something out for free (it comes with decent documentation.)

For older programmers - go download it now and have a play with it. You will either be glad those days are gone, or wish for simpler (pre-windows) times. I can't quite decide which side of that fence I'm on.

Summary: Old, but not dead, still has its uses.

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly:
Installation:
Update possibilites: