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Pascal was my favorite language for a number of years. But it was completely inappropriate for systems programming because it was too protective, it kept you fr

by mark-r 7y ago

Pascal was my favorite language for a number of years. But it was completely inappropriate for systems programming because it was too protective, it kept you from doing the things that are regularly required at an OS level.

laumars 7y ago
> Pascal was my favorite language for a number of years. Likewise :) > But it was completely inappropriate for systems programming because it was too protective, it kept you from doing the things that are regularly required at an OS level. I guess it depends on what systems you're programming. I seem to recall Pascal was heavily used in the early days of Windows and Macintoshes. Albeit my memory is hazy so perhaps that was "just" user applications with the lower level stuff being done in assembly?
- notacoward 7y ago
  I started my professional programming career working in Pascal on the Mac. I clearly recall having to write one piece (a MIDI driver) in assembly. I have fuzzier memories of the interfaces using a rather explicitly Pascal-based string format and stack calling convention, and MPW was also Pascal-oriented rather than C-oriented, so I suspect that at least some of the system software was written in Pascal. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I recall hearing that practically all of what Atkinson and Hirschfeld and Capps and so on wrote for the original ROMs was in assembly (as distinct from what had been done on the LISA) because that was the only way it would fit.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    The Pascal and C calling conventions were different in the way the stack got cleaned after a function call, and Pascal turned out to be ever so slightly faster. So the OS functions used that as the standard. Microsoft had a keyword that could be applied to any function in C to make it compatible. Assembly sounds very believable for early OS work.
- mark-r 7y ago
  Most of my experience was user applications. Wirth later created the Oberon system completely in Modula, which was basically Pascal++. So maybe it was closer to suitable than I remember.

by mark-r 7y ago

laumars 7y ago

> Pascal was my favorite language for a number of years. Likewise :) > But it was completely inappropriate for systems programming because it was too protective, it kept you from doing the things that are regularly required at an OS level. I guess it depends on what systems you're programming. I seem to recall Pascal was heavily used in the early days of Windows and Macintoshes. Albeit my memory is hazy so perhaps that was "just" user applications with the lower level stuff being done in assembly?

notacoward 7y ago
I started my professional programming career working in Pascal on the Mac. I clearly recall having to write one piece (a MIDI driver) in assembly. I have fuzzier memories of the interfaces using a rather explicitly Pascal-based string format and stack calling convention, and MPW was also Pascal-oriented rather than C-oriented, so I suspect that at least some of the system software was written in Pascal. OTOH, I'm pretty sure I recall hearing that practically all of what Atkinson and Hirschfeld and Capps and so on wrote for the original ROMs was in assembly (as distinct from what had been done on the LISA) because that was the only way it would fit.
- mark-r 7y ago
  The Pascal and C calling conventions were different in the way the stack got cleaned after a function call, and Pascal turned out to be ever so slightly faster. So the OS functions used that as the standard. Microsoft had a keyword that could be applied to any function in C to make it compatible. Assembly sounds very believable for early OS work.
mark-r 7y ago
Most of my experience was user applications. Wirth later created the Oberon system completely in Modula, which was basically Pascal++. So maybe it was closer to suitable than I remember.