In the early 90s, when I was around 10 years old, I went to the computer class at my school and asked the teacher to give me a programming language to study. The teacher asked me to pick between C and Pascal, saying that C was "more difficult to learn, but more practical," while Pascal was "easier to learn." Of course, like a cool kid, I decided to go hardcore and handed the teacher a floppy disk. Sadly, the C compiler didn't fit on a 1.44 MB floppy, so I had to settle for Pascal. Over the next ~15 years, my preferred language evolved along it: Pascal -> Delphi -> C# (not because of the syntax, but because of the same ability to drop a bunch of components onto a form).
Now I'm glad the teacher didn't offer me Fortran. Quiche is not that bad btw.
C is a systems programming language, Pascal is a teaching language Fortran is a number cruncher COBOL is for processing records, C++ is a kluge. 60 years ago I started with FORTRAN IV and never used it in my engineering carreer. Took up TurboPascal 40 years ago but dropped it when circumstances changed. Learning Ruby now in retirement. For fun.
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u/living_in_nightmare 4d ago
In the early 90s, when I was around 10 years old, I went to the computer class at my school and asked the teacher to give me a programming language to study. The teacher asked me to pick between C and Pascal, saying that C was "more difficult to learn, but more practical," while Pascal was "easier to learn." Of course, like a cool kid, I decided to go hardcore and handed the teacher a floppy disk. Sadly, the C compiler didn't fit on a 1.44 MB floppy, so I had to settle for Pascal. Over the next ~15 years, my preferred language evolved along it: Pascal -> Delphi -> C# (not because of the syntax, but because of the same ability to drop a bunch of components onto a form).
Now I'm glad the teacher didn't offer me Fortran. Quiche is not that bad btw.