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Are Clascal, Lisa Pascal, and Object Pascal similar? It amazed me how quickly Pascal and Object Pascal faded from use. It was taught in many universities and h

by tabtab 4y ago

Are Clascal, Lisa Pascal, and Object Pascal similar? It amazed me how quickly Pascal and Object Pascal faded from use. It was taught in many universities and had a decent feature set for a strong-typed language. There were a few annoying things, but most could be fixed in future releases. It was essentially Java before Java. My guess is that the C-flavors just seems "more cool" at the time.

Rochus 4y ago
> Are Clascal, Lisa Pascal, and Object Pascal similar? Well, they are similar in any case since all are Pascal descendants and all are specifically descendants of Apple II and III Pascal. Clascal added OO features to Lisa Pascal - some new keywords and semantic rules; you can have a look at the grammar here https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal/blob/master/syntax/LisaPascal.ebnf https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal/blob/master/synt... where the Clascal additions are framed by ifdefs. Object Pascal had yet other keywords and semantics to achieve the same goal (e.g. "object" instead of "subclass", class name prefixes for methods instead of "methods of" blocks, etc. > how quickly Pascal and Object Pascal faded from use Lisa Pascal, Clascal and Object Pascal had some disadvantages to e.g. C++; there were e.g. no namespaces; whatever was imported with the "uses" clause shared the same global namespace. Apple started to use C and C++ around 1988 for internal software development; according to the CHM interview with Larry Tesler MacApp only survived that long because with Adobe there was a big user; and there was external pressure so MacApp was eventually rewritten in C++; and remember that Jobs neither used Pascal at Next, but Objective-C instead.
wk_end 4y ago
The two big features of Java - that helped it take over from C++ - were GC and the JVM ("write once, run anywhere!"). Object Pascal didn't have either of those things...Object Pascal was essentially Pascal-With-Classes, in the same was that C++ was C-With-Classes.
WorldMaker 4y ago
Universities stopped teaching it likely for market demand reasons. C/C++ had larger market share. They switched to Java around the time big Enterprise switched to Java. Knowing the sorts of professors teaching intro classes, I'm not sure "cool" would have anything to do with such choices. (I kid, mostly.)
- Rochus 4y ago
  > Universities stopped teaching it likely for market demand reasons. They usually don't do that. Why else would Lisp or Scheme lasted as a teaching language in the US for that long, or Modula-2 and Oberon at ETH Zurich, or even Simula 67 in Scandinavia.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    I don't think it is an "either/or" here. I suggested market demands as a factor, not as the sole exclusive answer. Though I think some universities are more susceptible to market demands than others (those with big emphasis on career placement programs or cooperative education internship programs, for instance). Also, there's a lot of peer pressure between universities and from some points of view many parts of that can also be considered market demands though not the market you thought I meant (who is writing and selling the textbooks and other teaching materials? how expensive for lab computers and students are compilers/tools/IDEs? how many other professors at the school know the language for later classes? how easy is it to hire professors that can teach or accept assignments in the language?).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

by tabtab 4y ago

Rochus 4y ago

> Are Clascal, Lisa Pascal, and Object Pascal similar? Well, they are similar in any case since all are Pascal descendants and all are specifically descendants of Apple II and III Pascal. Clascal added OO features to Lisa Pascal - some new keywords and semantic rules; you can have a look at the grammar here https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal/blob/master/syntax/LisaPascal.ebnf https://github.com/rochus-keller/LisaPascal/blob/master/synt... where the Clascal additions are framed by ifdefs. Object Pascal had yet other keywords and semantics to achieve the same goal (e.g. "object" instead of "subclass", class name prefixes for methods instead of "methods of" blocks, etc. > how quickly Pascal and Object Pascal faded from use Lisa Pascal, Clascal and Object Pascal had some disadvantages to e.g. C++; there were e.g. no namespaces; whatever was imported with the "uses" clause shared the same global namespace. Apple started to use C and C++ around 1988 for internal software development; according to the CHM interview with Larry Tesler MacApp only survived that long because with Adobe there was a big user; and there was external pressure so MacApp was eventually rewritten in C++; and remember that Jobs neither used Pascal at Next, but Objective-C instead.

wk_end 4y ago

The two big features of Java - that helped it take over from C++ - were GC and the JVM ("write once, run anywhere!"). Object Pascal didn't have either of those things...Object Pascal was essentially Pascal-With-Classes, in the same was that C++ was C-With-Classes.

WorldMaker 4y ago

Universities stopped teaching it likely for market demand reasons. C/C++ had larger market share. They switched to Java around the time big Enterprise switched to Java. Knowing the sorts of professors teaching intro classes, I'm not sure "cool" would have anything to do with such choices. (I kid, mostly.)

Rochus 4y ago
> Universities stopped teaching it likely for market demand reasons. They usually don't do that. Why else would Lisp or Scheme lasted as a teaching language in the US for that long, or Modula-2 and Oberon at ETH Zurich, or even Simula 67 in Scandinavia.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I don't think it is an "either/or" here. I suggested market demands as a factor, not as the sole exclusive answer. Though I think some universities are more susceptible to market demands than others (those with big emphasis on career placement programs or cooperative education internship programs, for instance). Also, there's a lot of peer pressure between universities and from some points of view many parts of that can also be considered market demands though not the market you thought I meant (who is writing and selling the textbooks and other teaching materials? how expensive for lab computers and students are compilers/tools/IDEs? how many other professors at the school know the language for later classes? how easy is it to hire professors that can teach or accept assignments in the language?).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]