Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-june!pardo
From: pardo@june.cs.washington.edu (David Keppel)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Pascal vs. Algol (Was: Algol 60 vs Algol 68 (was "stack machines (Burroughs)"))
Message-ID: <5195@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 88 00:42:27 GMT
References: <1521@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1532@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <476@pcrat.UUCP> <130@quintus.UUCP> <961@gethen.UUCP>
Reply-To: pardo@uw-june.UUCP (David Keppel)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 21

In article <961@gethen.UUCP> isaac@gethen.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) writes:
>The main reason Pascal is so popular today is the same reason BASIC is:
>micro programmers were hungry for high-level (relatively) languages, and
>vendors addressed the marketplace by adapting teaching tools.

I would claim different: that the reasons that PASCAL are (was) so
popular include:
+ Simplicity: can be implemented reliablly.
+ Simplicity: can be understood effectively.
+ Quality: The language had years of thinking in it before it came
  into an implementation.
+ Straightforward: A compiler can do little optimization and produce
  good code.
+ Defintion: There is a good standard to adhere to.

I think that these reasons (and others) are responsible for the
vendors' choice of Pascal over Xyz.  I'm not claiming that there
aren't problems with Pascal, there are many.  As Issac (or somebody)
pointed out, Wirth designed it as an EDUCATIONAL language; it is an
accident of its careful design that it became so popular.

	;-D on  ( C++ is the Fortran of the 90's )  Pardo