Historical language survey

[kris]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Don Clugston wrote:
> 
>> Just Pascal, and I never liked it.
>> <rant> It seemed to go out of its way to make pointers difficult to 
>> understand. Plus, the first line of code was the "program" statement, 
>> which didn't actually do anything, and the last was an almost 
>> invisible fullstop. This was supposed to be a good teaching language? 
>> </rant>
> 
> 
> I liked Pascal until I tried to write useful programs in it (this was 
> with Pascal implemented according to Wirth's book). It seems I spent all 
> my development time fighting the compiler. The language semantics locked 
> everything up so tight there was no way to get things done.
> 
> Then I read K+R, and it was like the light coming on. The language let 
> me do what I want (casting is the magic ingredient). Despite using early 
> very buggy C compilers, I spent my time working on my algorithms rather 
> than fighting the compiler.
> 
> Pascal vendors noticed the exodus to C, and added a whole boatload of 
> C-like extensions to Pascal to make it a usable. By then, though, it was 
> too late to interest me; I never looked at Pascal again. (The other 
> problem with all those extensions is every vendor did them differently, 
> making Pascal probably the most non-portable language in existence 
> because you *had* to use the extensions.)
> 

Eh? We're talking about the language according the Wirth here (as Walter 
notes vis-a-vis Wirth's book). Somebody here ought to note that Pascal 
was designed *solely* as an educational tool, for /teaching structured 
programming/ ... the syntax and design was never intended as a solution 
for general-purpose systems programming. It's silly to compare it to C


 > Pascal basically missed its market window.

Pascal became the de-facto language of choice within teaching 
establishments; much of the western CS undergraduate courses became 
oriented toward Pascal. The UCSD p-system became the most advanced 
software teaching tool in existance. I'd say Pascal hit its "market 
window" with extreme accuracy. As would most others who were around at 
the time.

If you want to talk about languages intended for systems-programming, 
perhaps you should compare to Modula-2 and Modula-3 instead. Now there's 
a great language that missed its "market window" and/or opportunity.

Interesting to note that D is basically a Modula-3 clone, using C-like 
syntax instead and adding some more op-overloading. Perhaps D could 
adopt the more advanced 'import' capabilities from Modula-3 also? Back 
in the dark ages, they understood such things rather well ... the design 
in Modula-3 allows one to extend original, imported modules without fear 
of breaking the code that imports them. What a concept <g>

In fact, here's an NG post from almost 5 years ago: 
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/94.html