Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?

I’m puzzled.

A typed, compiled language easy to program.

Why did Pascal fade instead of growing?

Programming languages have network effects. More popularity -> more utility. Popularity of language is not determined rationally.

C had small edge in utility at first, then it ballooned into huge base of programmers. Familiar syntax can sell completely new language with different semantics. Choosing syntax from C has lead to success of C++, Java, JavaScript, JSON, ... despite completely different semantics.

Pascal and successors Modula Oberon and Ada with similar syntax features did not succeed. It had little to do with language features, ease to learn (except surface syntax) or semantics.

In the 1980s, Pascal was all the rage. The Apple Lisa and Macintosh programming manuals had two examples for every API call: Assembly language, and Apple Pascal.

But I think when Microsoft settled on C for Windows programming, Apple and others jumped on the bandwagon. And since the languages are actually very similar, I think that Pascal was mostly seen as irrelevant after that. It lacked a distinct niche apart from C.

I think your first link [freepascal.org] speaks volumes. I clicked on it and was taken to a page which looked like it was stuck in a 1990s timewarp. Opened it on my phone and, as expected, no concessions to mobile layout at all. Just that massive page of text rendered in microscopic size on my phone screen.

Back to the site on my laptop and I look for the two things I want to see up front when deciding whether I'm interested in dipping a toe into a new programming language:

1: What are its selling points?

2: What does the syntax look like.

Nothing at all there to give me any info. Just a load of text outlining the differences between the latest point versions. So I click on 'Documentation' thinking there might be a 'Quickstart Guide' or something of that ilk there, that will give me some of the info I want. Nope. Just various in-depth User Guides as downloadable PDFs or HTML versions.

OK. Let's try the HTML version. I click on that and the entire screen fills up with a massive index of all the chapters and sub-sections in the guide. None of them called anything remotely welcoming like 'Start Here' or 'Quickstart'

Oh, and not that it's strictly necessary. But the only visuals I saw on my abortive mission onto that website were a tiny badly cut-out clipart picture of a cheetah [the project icon?] at the top of the front page and a couple of other nondescript icons at the bottom, one of which was a broken link.

Pascal may be the best programming language in the world and 'fashion' may have played some part in its alleged demise. But some people [and projects!] don't exactly do themselves any favours by actually making an effort to sell themselves, do they?

Probably, I programmed both back then and Pascal had the better development experience as a language but C had the libraries and the mindshare so it kinda depends where you draw the lines for developer experience.

Turbo Pascal was in it's day a joy to work with as a language - clean, fast (compilation and runtime), good documentation, decent tooling.