4 ms·

> For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified Pascal (Turbo Pascal), why did C/C++ win there, too? Turbo Pascal

> For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified Pascal (Turbo Pascal), why did C/C++ win there, too? Turbo Pascal was quite successful in its day. But Microsoft chose C, and the rest is history. Absent Microsoft's decision, Pascal might still be around. If you look at early Mac development, for instance, Pascal was actually preferred. C only ended up winning due to being better known, which was a result of the critical mass of programmers trained on Unix and Microsoft's offerings.

jstelly 9y ago
That doesn't agree with my experience. I switched from Turbo Pascal to Turbo C in the late 80s while doing DOS development because it was a better tool for the job. It had nothing to do with microsoft or windows (v3.0 was not yet out and few people developed windows apps before v3.0). Pascal (the language) was definitely not preferred for DOS development at that time - it's just that until 1987 there wasn't really C development environment that could compete with Turbo Pascal. I did some Amiga development back then also and that was exclusively in C with some 68k assembly. I don't really recall anyone hoping for a pascal environment to replace their C tools, but the Amiga OS was more C-oriented than DOS at the time.
clouddrover 9y ago
> Pascal might still be around. Well that's a bit rude. Pascal is still around! And I love it. Behold: https://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.freepascal.org/ https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
WalterBright 9y ago
> But Microsoft chose C Ironically, the early Windows API used Pascal calling conventions.