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 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family? Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 09:00:16 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: <87wnrkf9pr.fsf@nightsong.com> References: <5afvagd0g4uajs1ji35v3lorkgb2kd56qu@4ax.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="e76798f5f4fc977632a744385883256e"; logging-data="24836"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/i3VvGL4xQqbRC9/mCz4Y/" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:kFBygX9v8JFK2pzE2Gg4qjBII7k= sha1:CdFoYBN6G5+duoc+mDNDDvaoP5k= Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62029 List-Id: Dennis Lee Bieber writes: >>Algol 60 did not have a defined I/O. > Just curious -- do you mean the I/O was all by linked in > function/subroutines rather than being keywords in the language? Yeah, something like that. But there were successful Algol 60 implementations, including on Burroughs and Univac mainframes. C. A. R. Hoare supposedly called Algol 60 "a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors. >>I/O in Pascal was flawed. > Well... It probably worked quite well in the original OS... It wasn't just the I/O: http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/why_pascal/ Borland Turbo Pascal was very popular and apparently practical, though. I never used it but I have the impression that it (like most deployed Pascal implementations) somehow supplied workarounds to the limitations described in the paper above. These were interesting: * Things Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than: https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html * Personal History of compilation speed part 2 (scroll down for the part about Turbo Pascal): https://prog21.dadgum.com/47.html The binary of Turbo Pascal was eventually released for no cost download, but apparently the source code was never released. That is disappointing based on how cool the above articles make it sound.