pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) (06/29/88)
In article <961@gethen.UUCP> isaac@gethen.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) writes: >The main reason Pascal is so popular today is the same reason BASIC is: >micro programmers were hungry for high-level (relatively) languages, and >vendors addressed the marketplace by adapting teaching tools. I would claim different: that the reasons that PASCAL are (was) so popular include: + Simplicity: can be implemented reliablly. + Simplicity: can be understood effectively. + Quality: The language had years of thinking in it before it came into an implementation. + Straightforward: A compiler can do little optimization and produce good code. + Defintion: There is a good standard to adhere to. I think that these reasons (and others) are responsible for the vendors' choice of Pascal over Xyz. I'm not claiming that there aren't problems with Pascal, there are many. As Issac (or somebody) pointed out, Wirth designed it as an EDUCATIONAL language; it is an accident of its careful design that it became so popular. ;-D on ( C++ is the Fortran of the 90's ) Pardo
peter@ficc.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (06/29/88)
In article ... pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes: > I would claim different: that the reasons that PASCAL are (was) so > popular include: > + Simplicity: can be implemented reliablly. This is definitely #1. It was designed to be easy to implement. > + Defintion: There is a good standard to adhere to. Why doesn't anyone adhere to it, then? The MOST popular Pascal out there isn't a proper superset of *any* of the Pascal standards. -- -- `-_-' Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva. -- U Ferranti International Controls Corporation. -- Phone: 713-274-5180. CI$: 70216,1076. ICBM: 29 37 N / 95 36 W. -- UUCP: {uunet,academ!uhnix1,bellcore!tness1}!sugar!ficc!peter.
isaac@gethen.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) (07/01/88)
In article <5195@june.cs.washington.edu>, pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel) writes: (In response to my asserstions about why Pascal is so popular.) > + Simplicity: can be implemented reliablly. > + Simplicity: can be understood effectively. > + Quality: The language had years of thinking in it before it came > into an implementation. > + Straightforward: A compiler can do little optimization and produce > good code. > + Defintion: There is a good standard to adhere to. The first three maybe apply to Pascal, but they apply even more so to LISP! As for the last, well, the most widely used Pascal compiler knowadays is Turbo.... > > I think that these reasons (and others) are responsible for the > vendors' choice of Pascal over Xyz. You sort of unintentionally make my point here when you can't remember the name of any languages that were seriously in the running against Pascal. You say they "chose" Pascal, but what did they choose it against? As with BASIC before it, and MS-DOS after it, Pascal won out because it was a kind of software lots of people understood, or thought they did.