The Grey Room

prog-chick wrote: here's one for the really very grey room....... woke up this morning, sneezed................and put my back out!!! I am now wedged in a chair at the desk.........have no idea how to get out of it though..........kids (on holidays) are milking it for all they are worth and the beloved figured ther was no point looking for dinner and has gone to pick up pizza (kids are much impressed!) So here I am.... aging cripple.....hoping to recover in time for a gig at the weekend.........might need to hire a zimmer at this rate! oh yeah, Mary Whitehouse experience was GREAT!!!!

You have my sympathies p-c. You just need to get someone to walk up and down on your back, that should sort it out.

I'm off to see Anderson and Wakeman tomorrow. My wife reckons they'll finish by 9 as they both need to be tucked up in bed with their cocoa by 10. I reckon they'll stop for a quick game of Countdown in the middle.

OK, I've read all 17 pages of this thread ( should've been called The Earl Grey Room ) , I'm up to speed on sheds, Basil and his towers, inexpensive pints and general madness. Now for a little Canadian content from across the pond! Greetings to all of you and I hope I can bring something to this thread. I'm 43, married with 2 kids. I live 40 minutes outside of Montreal. OK, enough about me. My first concert was Pink Floyd in 1974. I've seen Genesis a few times, Queen, Yes,Harmonium ( A rare treat ), Marillion and the list goes on. Most of the complaints about youth and whatever else are generally the same here. By the way, as far as computers go, I studied Fortran, Pascal, and other ancient computer languages in college ( for those who remember those punch cards we used to use... ) and in high school we had one of the first Macs. I'm proud to say I'm still using Apple computers today.

sleeper wrote: ^Hey, I studied PASCAL at uni last year!

    You mean they're still using that programming language... It's been so long...

sleeper wrote: Probably not, we were taught it as a sort of introduction to computer programing, didnt make much sense to me to use a dead language.

    a dead language

That's when you know you're getting old .

It is dead, I also studied Pascal, but at College.

It's not much use nowadays.

prog-chick wrote: here's one for the really very grey room....... woke up this morning, sneezed................and put my back out!!! I am now wedged in a chair at the desk.........have no idea how to get out of it though..........kids (on holidays) are milking it for all they are worth and the beloved figured ther was no point looking for dinner and has gone to pick up pizza (kids are much impressed!) So here I am.... aging cripple.....hoping to recover in time for a gig at the weekend.........might need to hire a zimmer at this rate! oh yeah, Mary Whitehouse experience was GREAT!!!!

Oh, PC, you have my sympathies - I'm lucky in that I've never had the misfortune to put the old back out, but a friend did manage to slip a disc whilst brushing his teeth

And as far as The Mary Whitehouse Experience is concerned, I have two words for you...

    

I learnt Pascal at uni as well.  I was told that it was the best language to teach good structured programming techniques because you couldn't jump back and forth through the code but had to plan it out properly.   Perhaps that's why they still use it.

Edited by Heavyfreight - October 24 2006 at 06:11

Bob Greece wrote: I used to teach Pascal 10 years ago. It might be an old language but fundamentally things don't change much. At the bottom it's all IF-THEN-ELSE-WHILE-FOR... and you can learn that as well in Pascal as you can in Java or any other new language.   If you think Pascal is bad just be grateful you didn't learn Prolog. [IMG]height=17 alt=LOL src="http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley36.gif" width=17 align=absMiddle> I used to teach that as well.

    
Did not study Prolog but heard various gripes from others who were much more advanced than I was. By the way, Bob, have you found some good music to help your child fall asleep? Remember that thread?

Jim Garten wrote: Oh yes - I distinctly remember Fortran & punch cards @ college in 1979 ; I seem to remember before that, we had a BBCB at school on which we learned BASIC (but all we really wanted to do was play that fantastic tennis game....)

Yes, I also had a 386SX, although it wasn't my personal machine, but the family one, but I used it most.

Ah yes, Bob is right, PASCAL teaches you structure, such as IF/THEN/ELSE/WHILE/FOR statements.

You guys are lucky, I was tried to be taught PERL.  Horrible language!

I don't know Prolog, but I did do COBOL as well.