Was it Pascal in general that was slow, or just USCD?

Was that the p-code system? Or was it a true compiler? Was it slow because it was p-code?

I wasn't on UCSD, but I don't recall Pascal being particularly slow compared to C. I never benchmarked them against each other, but it wasn't noticeably slower to my eyeball.

It was slow because the P-system was an interpreter, not native code. Java fixed that problem with the JIT. (Steve Russell created the first JIT for Java, and the result was spectacular.)

that's not entirely true, for example, Microsoft Word for the Mac (and PC) was p-code C, because p-code is a lot smaller. I think UCSD pascal was, yes, slow because of p-code, but also pascal is a very limited language compared to C. P-code with pointers is going to be a lot faster than p-code with no pointers.

the Apple compilers were good enough, with a lot of ASM.. the other comment is trying to change the subject to Sun things, which is like England vs France topic