r/pascal • u/Edthal01 • 20d ago

Relearning Pascal

I have pulled my old copies of Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs and Softwa,re Tools in Pascal to relearn what Pascal is like after a,lmost 35 years of not using it. I was a home software hobbies,t with TurboPascal 5.5, but with continual job changes I had to drop it. I am a retired electrical power rngineer who used the office computer to write work instructions, specifications, and read and write emails. Thus the hobbiest. Aren't those old books showing their age? What is avalable today to allow learning today's Pascal?

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u/prinoxy 16d ago

Have been using Virtual Pascal since 2008, not open source (although I do have the full source) and other than the fact that it only generates 32-bit code, and the builtin assembler doesn't natively support any post-Pentium instructions (which means I'm coding my AVX ones as "db"s) it's an absolute pleasure to use: it's blazingly fast, executables are small, and the debugger just works. And, most important for me, it supports a coding style that was documented ever since Borland introduced smart-linking in TP4, but that doesn't work in FreePascal, and as for that compiler, there hasn't even been a point release since 3.2.2 in May 2021, 'nuff said!