Ask HN: Why Did Pascal Fail?

This assessment of the situation between C and Pascal appears very distorted.

Below is a "blow by blow" comparison of C VS Pascal, using a 1989 version of C versus a 1982 version of Pascal (thus excluding Turbo Pascal and Apple's Pascal). With C being the later version, Pascal still compared favorably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Pascal_and_C

Furthermore, Pascal evolved into Object Pascal (created by Apple in 1986, from a forerunner named Clascal in 1983). Borland very soon afterwards (also 1986) added similar Object Pascal extensions to their Turbo Pascal.

Arguably Apple's Object Pascal and Borland's Turbo Pascal from the late 80s were the more feature rich and versatile language from that point, where only C++ could kind of compare (and it would have to play catch up). C# (born 2000) and Java (born 1995) didn't exist yet. If they compared the Object Pascal of 1989 to the C of 1989, a good case would be made for Pascal domination.

Here is a highly restrictive comparison of Object Pascal versus C (using C99). Object Pascal is very much comparable to both C and C++ combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Object_Pascal_an...

In regards to Brian Kernighan, it was a "hit piece". That paper had AT&T behind it (that's a smoking gun), where C and C++ were created. AT&T was actively competing against and trying to push Pascal out of the way.

It was also AT&T that pushed the C and C++ language dominance in the market, because they were behind Unix too. At that time, AT&T was one of the biggest companies in the world. As an American company, they had critical relationships and connections with other American tech companies, as well as lots of money. Something a single Swiss computer scientist (Wirth) didn't.

Niklaus Wirth, creator of Pascal and consultant on the Object Pascal creation team, has stated many times he embraced Pascal being used commercially too. His goal was both a well structured language for teaching and business.

Very true, Borland didn't pivot, they found a buyer (Embarcadero) and the top executives got paid. Then Embarcadero had to get their money, so Delphi prices kept getting raised higher. Totally out of the price range of normal users or independent developers.

Arguably what saved Pascal/Object Pascal was the open-source projects of Free Pascal/Lazarus and PascalABC (popular in Russia). Plus there were huge fans of Turbo Pascal, who got it released as freeware, as Borland had switched to selling the Delphi IDE.

This combination (Free Pascal/Lazarus, freeware Turbo Pascal, PascalABC, etc...) of open-source freeware Pascal eventually put pressure on Embarcadero to release the free Delphi Community Edition (2018). That was 5 to 10 years late in the game. A lot of user base and previous strong fans had significantly diminished.

However, it does appear that Object Pascal has found a decent level, at presently between the top 15 to 20 programming languages (were it was between top 1 to 10 in the 80s and 90s). It is possible for Object Pascal to see a bit of a resurgence, based around the free open-source dialects of Pascal and Embarcadero's strong push to put Delphi in schools (example- Turkey bought 1 million licenses for their schools or South Africa replacing Java with Delphi).

Actually, the record shows that Microsoft did very much try to crush Borland. While Microsoft did initially offer QuickPascal and embraced it (had no choice because of Pascal's popularity), Borland crushed them with Turbo Pascal 5.5 (1989) that had their version of Apple's Object Pascal (created in 1986) extensions. From Turbo Pascal 5.5 and up, it was using Borland's version of Object Pascal.

Note, C++ took a bit to take off, so didn't start to go toe to toe with Pascal until around 1992. C++ didn't get ISO until 1998. C# didn't happen until 2000. So Borland and Pascal were a thorn to Microsoft for years, not to mention Java (1995) and Sun.

Borland was eventually forced to sue Microsoft for unfair competitive practices. Microsoft was arguably playing dirty, and hired away many of Borland's top engineers. This included the creator of Turbo Pascal, Anders Hejlsberg. Who then Microsoft had him create C#, along with other ex-Borland engineers. In addition, there was all kinds of allegations during the 90s about Microsoft blocking or hiding APIs from Borland and negatively affecting their software.

That link sent me to a 30-minute nostalgia tour around its successor, Visual Fox Pro - a tool I needed to use at my first job.