5 ms·

> Naturally, those variants were ignored, as Kernighan had a message to sell. Those variants were "ignored" because they largely didn't exist. Kernighan's essa

> Naturally, those variants were ignored, as Kernighan had a message to sell. Those variants were "ignored" because they largely didn't exist. Kernighan's essay was written in 1981. The first release of Turbo Pascal wasn't until 1983. The Extended Pascal standard wasn't released until 1990.

pjmlp 5y ago
UCSD Pascal in 1977, Concurrent Pascal in 1974, DEC Pascal in 1981, and you can follow up in another dates here, http://pascal.hansotten.com/ http://pascal.hansotten.com/ And then there is the detail that Modula-2 was released in 1978, exactly with the goal to fix all original Pascal issues for systems programming.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  Modula-2 was at best obscure at the time, while Pascal was popular. Kernighan got involved with Pascal in order to write the Pascal version of "Software Tools", called Software Tools in Pascal. He wrote "Why Pascal is not my favorite PL" as a result of that book effort. I believe that is explained in the article. If there had been enough demand to also do a Modula version of the book, he might have written a more favorable article about Modula afterwards.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Obscure, when the book was published three years earlier. And based on Mesa, used at Xerox PARC. Then again, ignoring systems languages outside Bell Labs seemed to have been a thing back in the day.
    - throwaway81523 5y ago
      You are missing that Software Tools was written for a popular audience, more or less. The Pascal edition was written because people were using Pascal and wanted it. Nobody was asking for a Modula-2 edition.
Tozen 5y ago
This is not true, many variants of Pascal existed, prior to Kernighan's essay. Significant ones like Apple Pascal (1979) or DEC's VAX-11 Pascal (1979). https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Pascal_1980.pdf https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Pascal_1980.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/lang/pascal/AA-H485A-TE_VAX-11_PASCAL_V1.0_Users_Guide_Nov79.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/lang/pascal/AA-H485A-TE... Look in the acknowledgement section of his essay, and no clarification is given to the extent of research on other variants of Pascal outside of the original Pascal of 1973, and references to documents such as "An Assessment of the Programming Language Pascal" of 1975, and "Pascal User Manual and Report" of 1978. Those documents were ISO/IEEE related, to help promote an ISO standard of Pascal, versus businesses using Pascal in the commercial space like Apple and DEC (later Compaq) were doing (both major companies). Further damning of the type of assessment that Kernighan was engaging in, was him referencing other AT&T Bell Lab comparisons between C and Pascal. AT&T is not an innocent 3rd party, but where C and C++ were created and having a huge interest in pushing those languages, along with Unix in business and universities (which they did). Kernighan's essay (on 1970s era Pascal), should have been seen as biased and influenced by or promoting the commercial interests of AT&T (promoting their C and Unix). It should not have been taken seriously by anyone beyond 1989, where Pascal became Object Pascal. Apple created Object Pascal in 1986 (in consultation with Niklaus Wirth), and then Borland added Object Pascal extensions to the very successful Turbo Pascal 5.5 (allowing it to do OOP too). Nearly everything in his paper was clearly and already addressed by 1989 and even various ones when he published it in 1981. Kernighan also had plenty of time to retract or update the statements he made in his "hit piece" paper, to reflect on the ISO 1990 Pascal or the commercially used variants of Pascal such as Object Pascal. Yet, he never did so. Comparatively, it's not like C or C++ stayed the same language as it was in the 1970s, so it shouldn't be expected that Pascal is suppose to not change.

pjmlp 5y ago

UCSD Pascal in 1977, Concurrent Pascal in 1974, DEC Pascal in 1981, and you can follow up in another dates here, http://pascal.hansotten.com/ http://pascal.hansotten.com/ And then there is the detail that Modula-2 was released in 1978, exactly with the goal to fix all original Pascal issues for systems programming.

throwaway81523 5y ago
Modula-2 was at best obscure at the time, while Pascal was popular. Kernighan got involved with Pascal in order to write the Pascal version of "Software Tools", called Software Tools in Pascal. He wrote "Why Pascal is not my favorite PL" as a result of that book effort. I believe that is explained in the article. If there had been enough demand to also do a Modula version of the book, he might have written a more favorable article about Modula afterwards.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Obscure, when the book was published three years earlier. And based on Mesa, used at Xerox PARC. Then again, ignoring systems languages outside Bell Labs seemed to have been a thing back in the day.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    You are missing that Software Tools was written for a popular audience, more or less. The Pascal edition was written because people were using Pascal and wanted it. Nobody was asking for a Modula-2 edition.

Tozen 5y ago

This is not true, many variants of Pascal existed, prior to Kernighan's essay. Significant ones like Apple Pascal (1979) or DEC's VAX-11 Pascal (1979). https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Pascal_1980.pdf https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Pascal_1980.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/lang/pascal/AA-H485A-TE_VAX-11_PASCAL_V1.0_Users_Guide_Nov79.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/lang/pascal/AA-H485A-TE... Look in the acknowledgement section of his essay, and no clarification is given to the extent of research on other variants of Pascal outside of the original Pascal of 1973, and references to documents such as "An Assessment of the Programming Language Pascal" of 1975, and "Pascal User Manual and Report" of 1978. Those documents were ISO/IEEE related, to help promote an ISO standard of Pascal, versus businesses using Pascal in the commercial space like Apple and DEC (later Compaq) were doing (both major companies). Further damning of the type of assessment that Kernighan was engaging in, was him referencing other AT&T Bell Lab comparisons between C and Pascal. AT&T is not an innocent 3rd party, but where C and C++ were created and having a huge interest in pushing those languages, along with Unix in business and universities (which they did). Kernighan's essay (on 1970s era Pascal), should have been seen as biased and influenced by or promoting the commercial interests of AT&T (promoting their C and Unix). It should not have been taken seriously by anyone beyond 1989, where Pascal became Object Pascal. Apple created Object Pascal in 1986 (in consultation with Niklaus Wirth), and then Borland added Object Pascal extensions to the very successful Turbo Pascal 5.5 (allowing it to do OOP too). Nearly everything in his paper was clearly and already addressed by 1989 and even various ones when he published it in 1981. Kernighan also had plenty of time to retract or update the statements he made in his "hit piece" paper, to reflect on the ISO 1990 Pascal or the commercially used variants of Pascal such as Object Pascal. Yet, he never did so. Comparatively, it's not like C or C++ stayed the same language as it was in the 1970s, so it shouldn't be expected that Pascal is suppose to not change.