Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981)

Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by romwell on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:48AM (#19244084)

Good thing that we aren't using languages the way they were in 1981 anymore.

As for Pascal, TurboPascal has been revolutionary, and it came out in 1983, two years after this article came out. TP, the lightning-speed IDE, debugger and compiler in one small executable pushed Pascal to its peak popularity; Delphi was another revolution.

These days, Lazarus would be the go-to modern Pascal successor. (Delphi is still here, but is very much non-free; Lazarus is FOSS).

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Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by tokyodude on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:51AM (#19244390)

Someone told me TurboPascal was actually Modula-2 just named "Pascal" for marketing. Where they wrong?

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Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by mannschott on Monday February 25, 2019 @05:38AM (#19244590)

Yes.

Most obviously Modula-2 is is case-sensitive, while (Turbo)Pascal is not. Also Modula-2 addresses the danging-else problem in Pascal, while TurboPascal does not.

It wouldn't surprise me if TurboPascal addressed some of the same deficiencies in Pascal that Wirth also addressed in Modula-2, but they probably do so differently.

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Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981) by pjc50 on Monday February 25, 2019 @06:03AM (#19244691)

No, it was definitely Pascal. There's certainly quite a lot of stylistic crossover between the two languages but they are distinct.

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