Pascal did not fail. It was quite a succesful learning language. To illustrate algorithms, it was not much better than C; as a system language it was
much worse. So, it was replaced.
Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
11–20 of 168 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it be too reductionist to say "developer experience"?
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.
Turbo Pascal added a whole lot of bells and whistles to Wirth's Pascal, though.
Let's just say that the ability to include inline assembly language wasn't exactly a feature of Wirth's original Pascal.
The best feature of the classic Borland languages was the debugger, IMO.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#13ADA is its spiritual successor, which is still being used in some industrial/military applications.
(Turbopascal not counting, as it is the same as Pascal).
I learned Pascal in High Scool, in 98, where it was taught as a 'learning language'. Something to learn intro into programming and basic CS concepts, but then to move on into other languages for real work.
So, even in the 90s, it was not thought as a production level language. ADA was at the time, and of course Java was coming up in the scene as a replacement for C++ which was the default 'large programs' language.
Python and PHP were just starting to take off as the web was becoming popular.
Once the dust settled, ADA remained a niche language, and Pascal pretty much disappeared from school settings, as either Python or Java became the default languages for intro to programing.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#14Another reason is because Unix took over, and Unix had a very close relationship to the C language, itself being written in C.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#15or even nicer was modular 2. But natively, *nix and windows were C bindings, turbo pascal and delphi were the closest for pascal to be popular, but embedded systems also started going C, then C++ came along and OO was supposed to be a magic solution, and object pascal was a late response to the OO phase.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#16Fashion as much as anything. A lot of people have the idea that Pascal is somehow not "modern", but these same people almost universally haven't used it lately or even at all. Mostly companies just want to use what everyone else is using to ensure there's broad support and to make individual programmers easier to hire and fire. But there's nothing stopping you from using it now if you want to. Personally, I quite lik…
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 in…
freepascal.org is about the Free Pascal Compiler, not Pascal as a language. Both gcc.gnu.org and clang.llvm.org don't contain example C code and both look more dated than freepascal.org. The Embarcadero website on the other hand seems pretty modern with all the modern annoyances including slow page load time, popups and a blinking title text.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#17It was under too much pressure.
(Measurement unit joke.)
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#18http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html
The contents of that post have not been relevant for decades. I would recommend giving Free Pascal a whirl if you haven't. FPC can even compile to JavaScript and it works with WebGL https://github.com/genericptr/Pas2JS-WebGL#pas2js-webgl
> The contents of that post have not been relevant for decades.
But decades ago is precisely the timeframe we're talking about here.
Pascal lost to C for the reasons Kernighan mentions (among others), which is the question the OP was asking.
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#19when did pascal stop including the array size as part of the array data type?
Re: Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?
#20One of the factors was Microsoft. The rival Borland was big on Pascal with the venerable Turbo Pascal.
During the years where the mainstream office business landscape transitioned from DOS to OS/2, no wait, Windows, broadly speaking there where two types of application programmers. Those that used C or C++ and those that didn't.
For the later camp MS promoted various flavours of Basic, which also had to do with Office and scripting an Works for DOS etc. But I suspect it was also a "theological" battle against Borland.
On the other platforms Pascal was succesful, but the Amiga and the Atari tanked. The Macintosh escaped that destiny barely. Maybe Swift is the new Pascal?