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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Multilevel standards
Message-ID: <334@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Jan-85 22:45:37 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.334
Posted: Mon Jan  7 22:45:37 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Jan-85 02:58:56 EST
References: <4859@utzoo.UUCP> <11@mit-athena.ARPA> <177@gcc-opus.ARPA>
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> >Hey, c/mon fellas!  Pascal was designed as an introductory language for
> >a first programming course.  Of course, it's restricted! ... A toy language
> >(like Pascal) is not appropriate for building operating systems.
> 
> Ah John, perhaps you should have a short talk with the folks over at Apollo.
> They built an entire os, a transparent shared file system, network and
> graphics system using Pascal.

1.e6 bucks says they didn't do it in standard J&W Pascal with no extensions.
For one think, J&W Pascal has no way of declaring a procedure whose source is
in another file than the source file that contains the use of the procedure -
I don't think the folks at Apollo wanted to waste their time building an
editor which can efficiently handle a source file consisting of the entire
code of their operating system...

Wirth didn't develop Modula-2 just for fun - he wanted to take the lessons
learned from Pascal and build a language suitable for production use.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy