Of all the programming languages that I had to learn over the years, my favourite is still Pascal. Many programmers hate Pascal because it has such a rigid structure, but my Pascal code has much fewer bugs than anything I write in any other language, exactly because that rigid structure keeps me from making a lot of stupid mistakes.
#pascal #programming
@LordCaramac early MacOS was written in Pascal too. There was a lot of Pascal before the world shifted to C and C++. Not sure it was for the better either.
I also think a large part of it is having it forced on you as a “teaching language” – similar to requiring Shakespeare, you just end up with resentment, not learning its merits until much later
(have definitely seen several comments of devs looking back fondly on Turbo Pascal and Delphi)
I've heard people make similar complaints about #Rust, but it seems popular all the same.
I guess people are finally warming up to the idea that the compiler is your protector, not your enemy.
It helps that Rust has excellent documentation and compile error messages. The Rust devs tried very hard to help people learn how to write correct code. Their efforts certainly helped me, and I had nearly 30 years experience when I started with Rust, so that's saying something!
@cerement I taught myself Pascal in my early teens. A few years later when it came up at school, I already knew the language and used it to write silly little EGA graphic demos on the school PCs. No, the language I hate because I was forced to learn it is Java.
@LordCaramac I used Turbo Pascal in my computer science A-Level and still remember it fondly. Got to use it once in my career, in the form of Delphi, but only for a year or so.
@LordCaramac Pascal was my first statically typed and compiled language in the mid 90s. (Turbo Pascal on Mac) I’m sometimes curious to revisit it, but have never gotten around to it.
Jul 5, 2026, 2:23 AM
@LordCaramac This is what I wanted to hear today!
I started learning Object Pascal today with Lazarus IDE to build a GUI application that I was looking to do :)