[Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk
Fri Oct 14 11:06:51 CEST 2016


On 14/10/16 08:30, Michael Schnell via Lazarus wrote:

> Of course there are decent drawbacks regarding relying too much on RAD
> and about not really understanding the fundamentals behind it.
> But in the end the addressees are non-computer engineers.

Seconded. If I could make a general observation: when 
teaching/supporting Pascal-style languages I've found it useful to 
completely decouple pointers, records and dynamic memory, irrespective 
of the fact that most books lump them in together by talking about 
linked lists and trees.

Records are a useful general-purpose way of organising data. Pointers 
are something that refer to e.g. a block of known format returned by the 
operating system, but are used much less in OO systems than they used to 
be. Only after those are understood should dynamic memory be introduced, 
if ever.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]


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