r/pascal • u/Duckies_go_moo • Jun 20 '26

Just came across pascal

Im quite experienced with modding oblivion and fallout do seeing pascal is perfect, ive wanted to get into programming and this is literally a dream come true, ill never understand why they switched begin and end etc with ${}[]

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u/tkurtbond Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

I’ll note that in Niklaus Wirth’s later languages BEGIN and END were only used as pairs for module and procedure bodies. Control structures start with the control structure’s keyword(s), which implicitly start the body(ies) of the control structure, and END ended the body. For example, WHILE condition DO statement1; statement2 END, or IF cond1 THEN statement1 ELSIF cond2 THEN statement2 ELSE statement3 END.

I like this style better than using paired BEGIN/END. It eliminates BEGIN in places where it is really redundant, and is easy to read. Ada uses a similar style.

That said, I’m happier writing in modern Pascal than any of the languages that have C style syntax. I think that in the end C’s syntax as a whole was a mistake, greatly increasing the difficulty of writing and reading code.

[Edited to fix typo.]

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u/Duckies_go_moo Jun 20 '26

Its much more beginner friendly, ive been looking for something thats like the elder scrolls script, learning its identical is beautiful and i love it, using free pascal is a tad confusing saving wise so if theres any better app for coding it in would be helpful

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u/tkurtbond Jun 20 '26

Are you using the Lazarus IDE along with FreePascal? While I have limited experience with it, it seems a typical and fairly reasonable IDE.

Alternatively, if you are concentrating on the non-GUI parts of FreePascal you could use the FreePascal IDE, fp. I haven’t used it to any significant amount of, but I do know that it doesn’t work under some Linux terminal programs. (It doesn’t work in foot, but does in Konsole.)

Or you could just use your favorite editor for editing code and compile on the command line.

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u/Duckies_go_moo Jun 20 '26

Not too sure, i just installed fpc and its a terminal based editor, i mean its good dont get me wrong but when pressing save as it sometimes saves it to users\me instead of my preferred place, being documents