Free Pascal Training and Tutorials

CSGnet Archive CSG2004
1

[From Bill Powers (2004.09.05.0839 MDY)]

In the past anyone who claimed to be educated could converse knowledgably
about hunting, music, food, literature, natural philosophy, politics,
religion, phlogiston, and other such advanced subjects. Now, it is becoming
increasingly apparent to me, anyone who claims to be educated must be able
to discuss even more subjects, among which I would include the summer and
winter olympic games, dance, and computer programming. The last is
particularly important to understanding PCT and doing something with that
understanding. In the future, no scientist who studies human nature is
going to be able to get even an undergraduate degree without being able to
read, create, write and run programs, any more than a degree would be
granted to someone who could not read or write a sentence in the local
native language.

So I put it to you, members of the CSG and onlookers, that if you want to
claim that you know PCT in some useful way, you will have to complete your
modern education and learn how to read and write programs, just as you had
to learn to read and write some language before you could even find out
what others were talking about, and before they would take you seriously.

It is exceedingly easy to learn to read and write programs once you put
aside any irrational conviction that you can't learn what any 14-year-old
is learning nowadays. First you have to take down the defenses consisting
of all the reasons that programming is beneath you or above you or
irrelevant to you or only for nerds or too mathematical or too mechanistic
or too devoid of feelings -- everything that hides a lack of confidence in
your own ability to learn how to do it. All of those excuses are
irrelevant, if you want to be an educated person. And a lack of confidence
is an unnecessary vote against yourself, a vote that is overridden as soon
as I and just one other person believe that you can do it.

So start here:

http://www.intelinfo.com/newly_researched_free_training/Pascal.html

Download Free Pascal (Google search on that name), which is just what it
sounds like: a free pascal program that will run under Windows and several
other platforms, soon to include the Macintosh. I notice that Turbo Pascal
6 is also available free (but not 7, which isn't different enough to
matter). Then start using the free tutorials in the materials linked to the
URL above. Some of these teachers are high-school kids, for gosh sakes.
Most of them include ways you can ask for help if you don't understand
something, and of course you can always ask here on CSGnet, where quite a
few people understand Pascal programming and will be delighted to help
beginners over rocky places.

It's time to start removing the barriers between the cans and the can'ts.
Anyway, I want all of you be able to read everything in the new book I'm
working on, not just the parts between the programming passages. If you get
started right away, you'll just have time, because I hope to have the book
in print for my 80th birthday, which is two years away. Think about that.
There you are in the prime of life and at the peak of your intellectual
abilities, and here I am on the downslope of everything and I can still do
something you can't do -- and I'm no smarter than you are. Surely you can
match anything that a senile old dodderer can come up with between snorting
on an oxygen tube, gulping blood pressure pills, and peering blearily at
the world through plastic eyes (actually, I can probably see better after
the cateract surgery than any of you can, but never mind technicalities).
Just do it for the Gipper.

Best,

Bill P.

2

[From David Goldstein (2004.09.06.0212 EDT)]
[Bill Powers (2004.09.05.0839 MDY)]

Bill,
The Free Pascal Program does not work on a windows XP environment.
David

ยทยทยท

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Powers" <powers_w@FRONTIER.NET>
To: <CSGNET@listserv.uiuc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 11:27 AM
Subject: Free Pascal Training and Tutorials

[From Bill Powers (2004.09.05.0839 MDY)]

In the past anyone who claimed to be educated could converse knowledgably
about hunting, music, food, literature, natural philosophy, politics,
religion, phlogiston, and other such advanced subjects. Now, it is

becoming

increasingly apparent to me, anyone who claims to be educated must be able
to discuss even more subjects, among which I would include the summer and
winter olympic games, dance, and computer programming. The last is
particularly important to understanding PCT and doing something with that
understanding. In the future, no scientist who studies human nature is
going to be able to get even an undergraduate degree without being able to
read, create, write and run programs, any more than a degree would be
granted to someone who could not read or write a sentence in the local
native language.

So I put it to you, members of the CSG and onlookers, that if you want to
claim that you know PCT in some useful way, you will have to complete your
modern education and learn how to read and write programs, just as you had
to learn to read and write some language before you could even find out
what others were talking about, and before they would take you seriously.

It is exceedingly easy to learn to read and write programs once you put
aside any irrational conviction that you can't learn what any 14-year-old
is learning nowadays. First you have to take down the defenses consisting
of all the reasons that programming is beneath you or above you or
irrelevant to you or only for nerds or too mathematical or too mechanistic
or too devoid of feelings -- everything that hides a lack of confidence in
your own ability to learn how to do it. All of those excuses are
irrelevant, if you want to be an educated person. And a lack of confidence
is an unnecessary vote against yourself, a vote that is overridden as soon
as I and just one other person believe that you can do it.

So start here:

http://www.intelinfo.com/newly_researched_free_training/Pascal.html

Download Free Pascal (Google search on that name), which is just what it
sounds like: a free pascal program that will run under Windows and several
other platforms, soon to include the Macintosh. I notice that Turbo Pascal
6 is also available free (but not 7, which isn't different enough to
matter). Then start using the free tutorials in the materials linked to

the

URL above. Some of these teachers are high-school kids, for gosh sakes.
Most of them include ways you can ask for help if you don't understand
something, and of course you can always ask here on CSGnet, where quite a
few people understand Pascal programming and will be delighted to help
beginners over rocky places.

It's time to start removing the barriers between the cans and the can'ts.
Anyway, I want all of you be able to read everything in the new book I'm
working on, not just the parts between the programming passages. If you

get

started right away, you'll just have time, because I hope to have the book
in print for my 80th birthday, which is two years away. Think about that.
There you are in the prime of life and at the peak of your intellectual
abilities, and here I am on the downslope of everything and I can still do
something you can't do -- and I'm no smarter than you are. Surely you can
match anything that a senile old dodderer can come up with between

snorting

on an oxygen tube, gulping blood pressure pills, and peering blearily at
the world through plastic eyes (actually, I can probably see better after
the cateract surgery than any of you can, but never mind technicalities).
Just do it for the Gipper.

Best,

Bill P.

3

[From Bill Powers (2004.09.06.0600 MDT)]

David Goldstein (2004.09.06.0212 EDT)]

Bill,
The Free Pascal Program does not work on a windows XP environment.

It works in my windows XP environment.Do you mean that XP wasn't mentioned
in the list of systems, or that you tried it and it didn't work? What is
mentioned is NT, which is sort of the parent of XP.

Follow this link:

http://www.us.freepascal.org/down-win32.html

and select the first option, W321010full.zip. (33 megabytes, so if you
don't have a high-speed connection (DSL,cable modem, etc), ask me for a
CD-ROM which I will burn for you).

When you get the program it is in zipped form. Unzip it into a temporary
directory. Then in that directory click on install.exe and the program
will be installed; just accept all the suggested options as it goes. The
resulting installation will be in a directory called "pp". Inside pp is a
directory called Bin, and in Bin is a single directory called Win32, and
inside win32 are lots of files. One of them is called fp.exe. Make a
shortcut to that file (right-click on it, then left-click on the option
called "Make shortcut"). Drag the shortcut onto the desktop and you'll be
ready to go.

When you start Free Pascal, you come up in an "IDE" -- Integrated
Development Environment -- very close to the Turbo Pascal program. In fact
if you have the Turbo Pascal manuals, just about any version, you can use
the Editor instructions and they will work.

Look in pp/docs/user.pdf for lots of instructions for using the IDE. You
must have the Adobe Reader -- download it free, find it with Google. Also
the instructions for using the editor are there -- all the old Wordstar
keyboard commands are there, like Control-Q-C for going to end of text.
Look on page 81 and following.

Principle keyboard commands are:

F3: open a window for picking a directory, either to load an existing
program or to save one.
Alt-F3 to close a source file and clear the window.

F9 to compile a program in the Editor screen and check for errors.
Alt-F9 to compile and run a program. When the program exits you'll be back
in the Editor looking at the source code with the cursor where you left it.
The cursor is hard to see, by the way; it's just a little blinking dash.

F2 to save the source code.
Control-F2 to reset after an error occurs.

After you write and compile a program the first time, type Alt-O (letter)
to open the options window, and type s to save the current setup as the
default option. If you now exit from Free Pascal, the next time you return
to it, you'll see the same editor screen with your program on it.

To save the program and exit, type Alt-F4.

To write a new program: press F3. Fill in the "file to read" window with
the path and name of the new program file, with a .pas extension (for
example, enter c:\mysourcefiles\testprogram.pas). Hit enter and you will
see a blank editor screen with the title, "testprogram.pas". Type in the
following:

program testprogram;

uses dos, crt, graph;

var s: string;

begin
  s := 'Hello world'; {Pascal uses single quotes}
  writeln(s);
  writeln('Another way to say Hello World');

end. { note period after final "end" in program}

Type F2 to save this program.

Type Control-F9 (compile and run). There will be a blink and you'll be
looking at the source code again. Type control-F5 to see the text screen;
it will show what the program did.

To pause the program so you can see the output, put

ch := readkey;

just before the end statement. You'll have to add a variable declaration after
the declaration of s:

ch: char;

Hit any key to exit the progra and return to the editor.

That should get you started -- I know you know all this, but others don't.

Best,

Bill P.