Semicolons

When I was at uni in the late '90s, we had a course "Programming for Physicists" that used Standard Pascal. I was already familiar with a handful of other languages (including TurboPascal™) and finding out that there was such a thing as a "high level" language with no concept of "strings" was mind blowing (and not in a good way)!

Thankfully, I understand that my cohort was the last year before they switched to using that new fangled "Java" thing, which despite valid criticisms was at least a great language for learning how to "do OOP right".

Standard Pascal is not, IMNSHO a "great language" for really anything other than being less brain damaging than my later experience having to use that prehistoric dinosaur FORTRAN - and because it was in the context of stick-in-the-mud physicists at a university, it was a pretty early flavour, too (which at least *had strings* as of FORTRAN77 in '78, 2 decades before that Pascal course!)

I'm mostly Ok now, though. *twitch*