PASCAL as a systems programming langugage

[Henry Spencer]

> Well, what I like most about pascal is that it *works*.
> By this, I mean that if a C program takes an hour to write
> and a pascal program 2 hours, the pascal program is debugged
> in 20 minutes, and the C program in 2 days.
> 
> ... It took me no more than 8 hours to
> write *AND DEBUG* a ~600 line pascal program. ...
> 
> Now, if anyone ever succeeded in accomplishing something like
> this in C, I would be very interested. Usually, I find that C programs
> of that size (say, 200-1000 lines) take about 1 day per 100 lines
> to write.

It is quite possible to compose several hundred lines of C in one
evening and have it right the first time, with no debugging needed.
This requires a pretty good idea of what you're going to do, plus
really fierce self-discipline ("if the code isn't OBVIOUSLY right,
throw it out and do it over, even if it hurts"), but it is possible
sometimes.  It would certainly be possible in Pascal as well.

That aside, the C rate you quote strikes me as low; insofar as I can
put numbers on it, my C programming rate seems comparable to the
Pascal rate you quote.  There are all sorts of apples-vs-oranges
problems here, of course.

I confess that I would prefer a strongly-typed language, which would
transfer the need to be careful about certain things from me to the
compiler.  Getting things done well in C requires more care, and quite
possibly requires more experience to achieve a given productivity level.
But it's a perfectly usable language, and has a number of capabilities
that are difficult to match in a strongly-typed language.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry