Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deserve a new revisit?

Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by mickeyp on Friday November 06, 2026 @02:14AM (#50389166)

Pascal.

Like, all of it. People who decry it think of Wirth's original implementation but never the decades of (admittedly slow, Delphi was hardly blazing trails here...) improvements so they think it sucks. Pascal is great.

With AI, I think it's a future worth exploring. Great low-level and efficient string handling, unlike C.

Stupendously fast compiler and linker, and it generates code that's near C++/C/Rust performance with relative ease. Cram more useful features into it; keep the memory and pointer system as it is; add more useful language concepts from other places. Hell, strap an optional GC into it for things where you don't care.

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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by rramadass on Friday November 06, 2026 @03:11AM (#50389530)

Nice.

Brinch Hansen on Pascal Compilers (pdf) - https://pascal.hansotten.com/uploads/pbh/brinch%20hansen%20o...

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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by ravenstine on Friday November 06, 2026 @09:17AM (#50392549)

Maybe I just got off on the wrong foot with Pascal. That was the one language I learned in school that I truly hated. At this point I don't really remember what implementation/compiler we used, but whatever it was definitely was pre-Delphi.

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Re:Ask HN: What are forgotten topics in computing that deser... by mikewarot on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:14AM (#50403210)

Turbo Pascal was amazing, Delphi was too... right up until they got greedy and went "Enterprise" with a 10x price hike.

Lazarus/Free Pascal are awesome, except for the documentation, which truly sucks. The ability to just toss a gigabyte of text into a string that you never allocate or free, and just works, is close to magic.

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