Best way to learn Pascal!

[brownninja97]

Im about to do computing at school and they do pascal there. Where the easiest place to learn pascal, i have 2 months so i can probably learn a lot. Its funny as pascal is so old that my 50 year old dad learned it when he did computing.

[Marc030]

Isnt Pascal a dead language? other than that there are online tutorials you can follow + i've seen some e-books.

[brownninja97]

Well the is teaching it so what can i really do? Ill try to find something on the internet and hopefully i dont have to pay.

[GoodBytes]

Pascal? really? Pascal?

What a waste of time in any possible way. I don't blame you, I blame your lazy ass teacher that is stuck in the times. I bet he still uses MSDOS, as he hates GUI OS's.

I guess he also wants floppies (1.2MB max).

[brownninja97]

Pascal? really? Pascal?

What a waste of time in any possible way. I don't blame you, I blame your lazy ass teacher that is stuck in the times. I bet he still uses MSDOS, as he hates GUI OS's.

I guess he also wants floppies (1.2MB max).

Quite a shame as the college is lit up with about 20 i5s.

[Bllinker]

Out here we also learn Pascal in school and our teacher is a normal guy, so I don't know what that previous post is about. He only teaches basics of the language. Well, it is said that Pascal is now a "school language". About your question, tutorials online and possibly some book, search at local libraries, in my city (<50 000) there are more than five good books about Pascal at our public library. Also find out whether you are going to be using Turbo Pascal or FPC as your IDE, so you can also learn some more advanced compiler-oriented stuff. Hope this gives you some information about where to start and good luck!

[rashdanml]

http://www.pascal-programming.info/lesson1.php

 

Don't see any reason not to start with just about any language. Most cases, syntax is transferable or identical, as long as you learn proper programming practices. I started with C in University, if I exclude a brief stint with BASIC and programming a mini sumo robot in High school. I know Python was taught in the Computer Programming course, but I never took it.

[YellowDragon]

Pascal? really? Pascal?

What a waste of time in any possible way. I don't blame you, I blame your lazy ass teacher that is stuck in the times. I bet he still uses MSDOS, as he hates GUI OS's.

I guess he also wants floppies (1.2MB max).

I feel the same way, why do colleges want to teach the most useless of things, really now Pascal is long gone from the professional world and is a dead language, there is no benefit you can gain from learning it and the time spent would be better put to use learning Java, C,C#, C++, Python 3.3, Ruby, etc. its like some college mathematics classes where some topic are interesting yet you would ask for a practical application and there is none to be found.

[rashdanml]

college mathematics classes where some topic are interesting yet you would ask for a practical application and there is none to be found.

Engineering. Statistics. Probability (basically all forms of luck-based games). Economics. Science. Pretty much every topic in Math IS used in practice.

Math doesn't have any direct applications based solely on it (well, besides programming and logic). Math is used to explain Science and Engineering concepts, among many other things.

 

I'll agree on one thing, a Math degree by itself is beyond useless. Combine it with a CS Minor or Accounting/Commerce or something else and it's a viable career path. I've had people go as far as to say Science is everything and Math is absolutely useless; don't make that mistake.

[Flojer0]

To the OP. Don't be discouraged by the hecklers.

 

I would say pascal is an amazing place to start because any habits you pick up in your first language are likely to be bad habits. If you move on to another language and don't really come back to pascal than many of those habits can dissapear.

 

Also, it will force you to think about programming and computer science at a higher level than syntax. And that is the key to doing well I think.

[constanrine5d]

Actually Pascal is really good if you want to learn programming just for solving math problems and stuff but for GUI stuff go C++ or Java. Myself I only know pascal and I'll go learn java so that i can mod Minecraft and stuff.