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

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

On Thu, 27 May 2021 09:00:16 -0700, Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
declaimed the following:

>It wasn't just the I/O:
>
> http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/why_pascal/
>

	I believe the original goal for Pascal was to be a teaching language
for algorithm development, and wasn't meant to be a real application
programming language. Heck -- the earlier VMS Pascal required one to link
into the FORTRAN libraries if one needed things like sin()/cos() functions.

>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.
>
	Which made it a "lock-in" language -- it wasn't Pascal as defined by
Wirth and UCSD. One had to use compatible hardware (Windows, as I recall).
Not much use when writing a satellite control (ground station) system on a
VAX/Alpha machine (and yes, one such WAS written in VMS Pascal*... A few
years later the new version was on HPUX [or whatever they called it]
written in C -- they went from PDP-11 assembly to VAX Pascal to HP C)



>
>The binary of Turbo Pascal was eventually released for no cost download,
>but apparently the source code was never released.  That is

	I believe Turbo Pascal evolved into Borland's Delphi, which added OOP
features. Now Embarcadero... And available in a "community edition"
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter (interesting: they
allow either Delphi OR C++Builder community editions, but not both on a
computer [time for virtual machine images <G>]) Community license needs to
be renewed annually (though is a free download as I read the site). OUCH --
Professional level is $1600 to start, and $400/year renewal (the initial
$1600 is "perpetual", the $400/year is a subscription for updates/upgrades)

>disappointing based on how cool the above articles make it sound.

	It feels bloated to me, but there is FreePascal with the Lazarus IDE.

	My last Python exposure was on my TRS-80 model 4; Alcor Pascal (under a
RatShack license name -- Model 3 was pure Alcor release). It had the odd
feature of allowing one to manually edit the "object" files. Once one
learned the structure (they were ASCII) one could cut&paste
functions/subroutines).

http://www.trs-80.org/alcor-pascal/

	I seem to recall having Blaise II (editor) configured to work like VMS
EDT (a bit of a trick, as the numeric pad only had 3 PF keys, not the 4
found on a VT100)

*	The realtime group did a survey of languages when they upgraded from
the PDPs -- choices were VMS assembly, FORTRAN77, Pascal, and C. We had
something like 30 people in the realtime group, and 70 people in the rest
of the program skilled in F77. They tossed out C as error-prone, F77 as
"old", assembly as "why change processor, then", and argued that many
graduates at the time were learning Turbo Pascal in college.
	When I saw the evaluation email, I sent back one that pointed out that
Turbo Pascal had a lot of add-ons that would not be meaningful in a Wirth
level Pascal (VMS did allow separate compilation, and linking to libraries
written in other languages -- DEC had a common set of built-ins to define
passing arguments as value/reference/descriptor so one could match the
convention of the library language). I also pointed out that, having
ignored the expertise of the 80+ F77 programmers, and gone the mile to
choose Pascal, they might have fallen onto their faces and picked DEC VMS
Ada -- a language designed for realtime processing...

	A few years later, the department manager confessed that Pascal had
been a mistake (I believe the lead realtime programmer had threatened to
leave if Pascal was not picked -- manager caved in).


-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
	wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/