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Why has C prevailed over Pascal?
- lutusp 14y ago> Why has C prevailed over Pascal? A combination of factors beyond those cited in the linked discussion: 1. C was closer to the machine, less abstract, at a time when abstraction was more expensive than it is now. 2. You could weave C and assembly together in the same program, developing under the same compiler, making it possible for an assembly-language programmer to migrate to C in small increments. 3. Pascal was strict when strictness cost more than it does now. 4. Pascal had much more overhead than C did, both in development and in operation, at a time when a typical machine had very little memory or storage space. 5. C had more documentation available, and more users to consult, than Pascal. So overall one might say "momentum" was the reason. I can remember in the early days at Apple (around 1980) loading Pascal into an Apple II using floppy disks -- three or more, as I recall, each read completely -- and thinking how Pascal had better be pretty wonderful to justify all that effort. And it wasn't.
- ezesolares 14y agoHaving programmed in Turbo Pascal back in the early 90s a lot, i agree that the abstraction level was an issue with low resource machines BUT you could also, do assembler and pascal in the same files easily, so i disagree with your 2nd reason. 3 its the same as 1 4 its the same as 1 5 Disagree, Turbo Pascal had one of the best Help i ever used back then and there were a couple of really good books back then.