Peter's Source
Peter N Lewis, Macintosh Shareware Author


Updated: 11-14-01

Peter N Lewis keeps a large archive of excellent source-code demos that he has written or modified at Stairways FTP site (look for files that have "source" in their name). Some of the source code is in Assembly, but most of it is in Pascal. Peter is one of many Pascal advocates on the Macintosh choosing to program in Pascal over C or C++. He is best known for his internet shareware products, including his award winning FTP client, Anarchie. The following is an excerpt from a 1995 TidBITS interview with Peter regarding his decision to stick with Pascal (provided with permission from Adam Engst, TidBITS editor):

Adam: You and Quinn are known for being major Pascal supporters in a development world that has largely gone over to C and C++. You even had anti-C t-shirts at the last few World-Wide Developer's Conferences. Without getting too technical, why do you continue to stick with Pascal, and does that cause problems at times?

Peter: The normal C argument goes like this: "Everyone else is using C, so therefore it must be good." Every Mac user should recognize that statement in a slightly different form, "Everyone else is using PCs, so therefore they must be good."

Basically, I continue to use Pascal because I'm more productive in it. I consider using Pascal to be a strategic advantage, doubly so when compared to C++. I've been reading a C++ book recently (know thy enemy), and every time I turn the page I see new ways to make tiny errors that are catastrophic and impossible to debug. I'm amazed that anyone can produce a working C++ program.

Copyright © 1995 TidBITS

The following are source code archives provided by Peter N Lewis, now hosted on Pascal Central:

Web page by Bill Catambay.