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UCSD Pascal allowed you to write compiled binaries on the Apple II -- that's very impressive technically when everyone else was either coding in BASIC or having
by Tloewald 12y ago
UCSD Pascal allowed you to write compiled binaries on the Apple II -- that's very impressive technically when everyone else was either coding in BASIC or having to code in assembler. My point being that this was, in its way, far more impressive than MS BASIC, but did not create a software behemoth.
- acqq 12y agoThe binaries were p-code. I agree, using Pascal at that point (very small RAM, the need to extend the Pascal to be more than a tool for learning) was surely a worthy technological achievement, and, if I remember correctly, the system allowed the user programmers to produce the programs which were bigger than the available RAM. That had otherwise to be custom implemented in the non-trivial programs at the time. To compare, original MS Word (for DOS) was also at least partially p-code and was bigger than the RAM. Before it, Wordstar also had to have the mechanisms of having only one part of the program in the RAM at the time. However I still find the later Turbo Pascal significantly more amazing product.