Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family?

[jm.tarrasa@gmail.com]

What's the problem with pascal (and any other language)? what has been pointed before: The underlying system is C-like.

When ever you want to access to a system utility, you need to write a weird interface. If you use C, the interface is "natural".

I'm a Pascal Guy. After BASIC, UCSD Pascal was my first love. Since then I have used Turbo Pascal and Delphi, they were good and successful languages because they had a good framework, that is, binding to all and every system feature. Moreover for any new fabulous library that appeared, there was a community and ecosystem that programed a binding. Nevertheless they couldn't keep the pace. There were more and more libraries with complex structures (sound, network, mail, internet, video, graphics) that linking from C was trivial, but linking from pascal was a good effort. 

So, no language but C has a chance? Right, no general purpose language has a chance.

The languages are COBOL from old days for business, Fortran for calculus from old days, and C/C++ for any other thing. There are new languages families: Java, its new and wonderful feature is "runeverywhere" (something in the old day's slow computers was a failure), Perl for dirty scripting (its being replaced), and finally PHP for web (oh my good!). And they inherited syntax from C, not from COBOL, or Fortran, and obviously not from Pascal. Pascal? What is Pascal?

There are other languages competing for those niches: Python, Ruby, C#, ASP and others. Trying to invade other's niches (Java and Python invaded web programming). But whenever they need to do something lowlevel or that needs intensive calculus that can't be let to interpreted languages, they make a library in C or C++ and interface it.

Why C became "The system's language"? Not sure. Pascal started as prove of concept and teaching language, not like a production language, so I'm not sure if there were other competitors. Beside this, C was for free in Unix, like BASIC in DOS, but much better than BASIC. By the way, once I read that AutoCAD started with Pascal, but replaced it because the compiler required changing floppy disks several times for every compilation.

What about Ada? Well it has the problems of any other general purpose language plus money and appalling lack of ecosystem. It looks like Ada never even made the effort of creating such ecosytem unless you were Boeing, Lookheed, or NASA.

Now I program mostly in Java and Python (and don't like too much). I'm starting a new project (commercial, no GPL) and considered other languages instead of Java: Delphi, Lazarus (freePascal similar to delphi) and Ada.

Ada was something I liked to try but... 
*Gnat Pro, 10.000$ seat. No way. It looks like it's only for deep pockets. I'm not Boeing.
*Gnat FSF, sorry, I have problems with the debugger in Linux. Something without support that doesn't work installed off-the-shelf is not for me for this project now (Lazarus works like a charm).
*Janus. It could be for prize, I still have to evaluate it.

What deters me is the lack of ecosystem. I look for a Crypto Library, I can find in FreePascal libraries, or bindings to libssl. Sound? there is FreePascal or Delphi. Integrate browser? wysiwyg editor? There are Delphi/lazarus components. What you find in Ada is a library sometimes maintained by a person, but more worrying with a few users.

I'm afraid that I will have to build the whole thing almost from scratch. Beside I'm afraid that with the lack of people, customers and community behind, a product like Janus could be discontinued in a near future.