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Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by clouddrover on Monday February 25, 2019 @02:52AM (#19243858)
This article pops up every now and again. Most of the criticisms are no longer valid. Pascal has moved on in the last 38 years.

If you don't know modern Pascal then check out Free Pascal, Lazarus, and Delphi:

https://www.freepascal.org/

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

(And Delphi documentation at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/ )

Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by acqq on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:21AM (#19243982)
Specifically, just two years after the title text was written, in 1983, there was already Turbo Pascal which was much more useful than the language as defined for the introductory university classes:

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/20693

It was the fastest compiler and environment of the time, but additionally, even before 1983, the "minimal" form of the language, suitable for teaching, was almost never used in production. What was used in production did have the necessary extensions which allowed having some very good software, with provably less bugs than C, because the basis was good and safer.

See also MacPaint, developed also around 1983 ("finished in October 1983"), in Apple Pascal:

https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw...

Even Go language took its influences from Pascal, "rediscovering" some aspects that were obviously better (for the humans writing programs) than C.

Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by rob74 on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:06AM (#19244159)
Actually the influence of the Pascal family and that of the C family are about equally significant, if you go by the chart from the "Go Programming Language" book (available in the free preview, page xiii https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Addison-Wesley-P...). Most significant is probably the module system, which, in good Turbo Pascal tradition, allows Go to run loops around other C-family languages (looking at you Rust ;) ), and of course the declaration syntax ("i int" instead of "int i").

Since I first came across Go I've been thinking that a Go-based Delphi clone would be really amazing. Maybe someone could breathe some new life into the Lazarus IDE by adding support for Go? Hmmm, actually there already is something: https://github.com/ying32/govcl - probably worth keeping an eye on...

Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by ptrott2017 on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:49AM (#19244087)
I think Go was more influenced by Pascal's descendent's notably Oberon-2 (Pascal ->Modula 2/3 ->Oberon) thanks to Robert Griesemer, but definitely an indirect but significant influence.
Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by kazinator on Monday February 25, 2019 @11:02AM (#19246542)
> Pascal has moved on in the last 38 years.

How many of these extensions are in ISO Pascal, though?

ISO Pascal was last updated in 1990 (ISO 7185:1990); there is evidently an ISO/IEC 10206:1991, a standard for "Extended Pascal". This Extended Pascal 1991 standard was evidently reviewed in 2008 and affirmed as-is.

FreePascal has a Wiki page about Extended Pascal:

http://wiki.freepascal.org/Extended_Pascal

I see a lot of "(not yet implemented)".

Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by ptrott2017 on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:54AM (#19244104)
Also the open source .Net relatives PascalABC.Net and and the Oberon family inspired Component Pascal if you are looking for Pascal related languages on .Net/Mono/Core.