From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.8 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_50 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 X-Received: by 2002:a05:622a:413:: with SMTP id n19mr1105396qtx.238.1622162047771; Thu, 27 May 2021 17:34:07 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a25:6c87:: with SMTP id h129mr8626821ybc.173.1622162047595; Thu, 27 May 2021 17:34:07 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.uzoreto.com!feeder1.cambriumusenet.nl!feed.tweak.nl!209.85.160.216.MISMATCH!news-out.google.com!nntp.google.com!postnews.google.com!google-groups.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 17:34:07 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <87wnrkf9pr.fsf@nightsong.com> Injection-Info: google-groups.googlegroups.com; posting-host=73.2.251.187; posting-account=JSxOkAoAAADa00TJoz2WZ_46XrZCdXeS NNTP-Posting-Host: 73.2.251.187 References: <5afvagd0g4uajs1ji35v3lorkgb2kd56qu@4ax.com> <87wnrkf9pr.fsf@nightsong.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <37c582bb-3012-4954-a26c-5d9614ac0c84n@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family? From: John Perry Injection-Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 00:34:07 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62035 List-Id: On Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 11:00:18 AM UTC-5, Paul Rubin wrote: > Dennis Lee Bieber writes:=20 > >>I/O in Pascal was flawed. > > Well... It probably worked quite well in the original OS...=20 >=20 > It wasn't just the I/O:=20 >=20 > http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/why_pascal/=20 >=20 > Borland Turbo Pascal was very popular and apparently practical, though.= =20 > I never used it but I have the impression that it (like most deployed=20 > Pascal implementations) somehow supplied workarounds to the limitations= =20 > described in the paper above.=20 I used Turbo Pascal in college 40 years ago, and yes! it did supply workaro= unds. Later I realized they looked a lot like features of Modula-2 (also by= Wirth) and of Ada. Wikipedia tells me (And Therefore It Is True (TM) ;-)) = that some of them come from UCSD Pascal. This next paragraph is from memory, which may be corrupted, and I may have = misunderstood it first, so don't take it too seriously, but: people who pai= d attention to what Wirth said and wrote about compiler design were able to= produce small and fast compilers. Somewhere you can find a report written = by one of Wirth's students about how they tried to modify one of their comp= ilers to use a tree instead of a fixed-size array with linear search for th= e symbol table. Everyone except Wirth was sure that the tree would be both = better and more useful, and everyone except Wirth turned out to be wrong. A= s I say, if it interests anyone I'm sure an online search will find it (but= it might not be trivial, which is why I'm not doing it now myself). > The binary of Turbo Pascal was eventually released for no cost download,= =20 > but apparently the source code was never released. That is=20 > disappointing based on how cool the above articles make it sound. FreePascal is an open-source reimplementation of Turbo Pascal. It boasts ma= ny of the speed advantages that Turbo Pascal has. I've never used it beyond= occasionally downloading & playing with it, then forgetting about it. regards john perry