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It lasted for a few years as a first-class supported language, but by the early 90s they shifted most of their focus to C++ so the system API being in Pascal be
by ndiddy 1y ago
It lasted for a few years as a first-class supported language, but by the early 90s they shifted most of their focus to C++ so the system API being in Pascal became more of a legacy annoyance than anything. You got to deal with Str255 types, putting "\p" at the start of all your string literals, remembering the rules for when to pass by reference or pass by value when you call toolbox functions, etc.
- pjmlp 1y agoThe fact is that without Object Pascal, there would not exist employees to work on MPW at all, or even Apple most likely. Maybe in some alternative universe they would have been just as successful using BCPL, but the fact C and C++ were ignored at Apple until some employees came up with MPW as side project until it was too late to turn back, speaks volumes about Apple culture. Just as it does the way A/UX was originally designed.
- ndiddy 1y agoApple officially supported C for Macintosh application development even back when they were still making devs do all their work on Lisas (see http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/workshop_3.0/Lisa_Workshop_C_Users_Guide_1985.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/lisa/workshop_3.0/Lisa_Wo...), but you're right that they were a majority Pascal shop until they shifted to C++ around when System 7 came out.
- pjmlp 1y agoIt did, as userspace tooling for customers, the system was written in a mix of Assembly and Clascal, Object Pascal predecessor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clascal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clascal