More #ai vibe #code garbage. Seriously...RedBull and Drum and Bass. I'm sure it works well with like #python but systems languages, like #pascal which I'm a master at or #c or #assmbler and I'm sure #lisp is like this where you have to keep an internal data structure map in your head or it just won't work. You have to have continuity between things. And those things are very abstract. They can't build an OS or a compiler https://www.howtogeek.com/i-tried-using-vibe-coding-to-create-my-own-productivity-app/

I wrote a new blog post:
A blast from the past: The UCSD p-System, Apple Pascal, and a dream of cross-platform compatibility never quite realized.
https://markbessey.blog/2025/04/14/a-blast-from-the-past/
#programming #pascal #retrocomputing

I had a thought that it might be fun to play around with some UCSD Pascal and p-System programming. I have fond memories of working in Apple Pascal in High School and doing some work in HP Pascal (on the 9000/300 series) at my first job.

There is *a lot* of p-system information on the Web, but it's generally very poorly organized. But I did manage to get an Apple 2 emulator up and running on my Mac, and I found disk images for Apple Pascal 1.3, so I'm now able to actually do some work in that environment.

It is amazing what we put up with in terms of user interfaces back in the day, isn't it? It's certainly a lot nicer running on an emulator that can execute 6502 code hundreds of times faster than an Apple II ever could, though.

I think my intermediate-stage goal here is to write a p-system emulator of my own that runs natively on the Mac. Probably it'll be in Rust, because fighting with Rust is now part of my day job, and I have to get better at it.

MacPaint was a revolutionary app that demonstrated the capabilities of early #Macintosh computers. Jeffrey Starr reviews its source code in his blog. The code in #Pascal and assembly language, while still in old procedural style, is an example of good programming practice.

https://ztoz.blog/posts/macpaint-source-code/

HIVEMIND: Does anyone have a copy of the TopSpeed Pascal 3.10 compiler?

I've discovered something. I can't unsee it. So now I have to follow it through.

The [TopSpeed] Pascal compiler could also be used to develop software for the Psion series 3 in a roundabout way if used with the PSION s3 SDK, as the environment allowed you to develop Pascal code with C code, headers and libraries you could get functional s3 apps by linking the Pascal code with the required C headers/libs and then compiling everything with the PSION SDK, in rare cases needing a little bit of glue C code.

Source: http://www.edm2.com/index.php/TopSpeed_Pascal

Does anyone have a copy of TopSpeed Pascal? I need to try writing Pascal software for #EPOC16. The documentation would be really handy, too.

I'm making a start on user types in the compiler. Basic type synonyms and typed pointers can now be declared. I want to work on the declarations code and data structures first, so I can't yet instantiate these types but can use them in other type declarations.

I'd much rather take Pascal's carriage than Pascal's wager any time!

TIL that Pascal started the worlds first bus company (as far as this youtuber found that history has recorded, which might have many biases)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsNEVRosKzM

Drawing Heighway’s Dragon - Recursive Function Rewrite - From Imperative Style in #Pascal (on the #c64 !) To Functional Style in #Scala 3

Nice slidedeck with very detailed explanations about revisiting code forty years later

https://fpilluminated.org/deck/256

Ieri sera ci siamo divertiti a sperimentare in live con "PAS2JS", un tool open-source col quale è possibile "transpilare" codice #Pascal in #JavaScript, in modo del tutto simile a quanto avviene con TypeScript: usare un linguaggio fortemente tipizzato in un ambiente "dinamico".

Siamo partiti dal classico "Hello World" fino al testare uno dei demo, il gioco Pac-man, un classico di tutti i tempi.

Per chi vuol guardarsi il replay della live, è disponibile su YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq0i_AGH5KQ

I know they’re now owned by Amazon, sadly, but Abe Books is still really useful for finding old technical books using their “want” mechanism. Yours truly has a copy of “A Model Implementation of Standard Pascal” by Welsh and Hay on the way.

#Pascal + #JavaScript? Sì... può... fareee!

TypeScript non è l’unico linguaggio che può "diventare" JavaScript. Grazie a #PAS2JS, anche il Pascal moderno può essere transpilato in JavaScript sia per il browser sia per Node.JS!

Pare ci si possa fare letteralmente di tutto: dal programmino fino al porting completo di un gioco arcade.

Mettiamolo alla prova martedì 4 marzo su #Twitch, partendo dal sempreverde "Hello World" e provando poi con script più avanzati!

https://twitch.tv/compilaquindiva

#Delphi / Object #Pascal in den Top Ten im Tiobe Index. Dass das nochmal passiert ... https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

We wouldn't have this problem with DOGE's interns if they had to learn COBOL, FORTRAN, and PASCAL - like I had to.

BTW: My major programming language? Perl

Second only to Objective-C... NOT SWIFT. Obj-C!

Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Delphi version 1.0’s Launch

｢ Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the launch of Delphi version 1.0 on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1995, at the Software Development West Conference in San Francisco California. More that 12 years of continuous IDE, language, tools and library development led up to the launch of Delphi version 1.0 ｣

https://blog.davidi.com/2025/02/14/celebrating-the-30th-anniversary-of-delphi-version-1-0s-launch/

We're one step further, the #KneisnerM100 can now finally be programmed in a high-level language like #Pascal.
Say hello, m100 - see picture ;)
Not that we do it, but we can now. It was really tricky to put software to the hdd, but I found a tool called 22disk, which can write from and to #IMSTurboDOS.
#RetroComputing #ComputerMuseum

CudaText updated to 1.221.0.0 on Haiku, these are _bin packages created here with a setup for fpcupdeluxe (recently updated) -> Lazarus 3.8 (recently updated) -> cudatextup, grabbed latest checkout, and the sources for CudaText.

One of my favirit editors to keep track of, although last update was almost a year ago for the public :)

https://cudatext.github.io/

Enjoy!

Programming languages to learn in 2025 (in order):

#Forth
#Scheme
#Smalltalk
#Racket
#Haskell
#Pascal
#Ruby
#Python
#Rust
#JavaScript
#WebAssembly
#C

This is a re-release (with video!) of my podcast interview with software engineer, writer, and publishing entrepeneur Jeff Duntemann. Jeff was the first editor of Borland's In-House Magazine "Turbo Technix" which was supplied to purchasers of early editions of Turbo #Pascal, Turbo C, and similar Borland products. He was the Structured Programming columnist for Dr. Dobbs Journal for a number of years.
#programming #electronics #retrocomputing

https://straypointers.com/e/s3e02.htm