From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: bakul@bitblocks.com (Bakul Shah)
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2017 16:36:58 -0700
Subject: [TUHS] Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language
 Unearthed!
In-Reply-To: <201708311749.v7VHnTH1029745@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
References: <201708311749.v7VHnTH1029745@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
Message-ID: <86CB2317-DAEC-4B47-AEC0-B3D5995DB2E8@bitblocks.com>


> On Aug 31, 2017, at 10:49 AM, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>> If Unix was written in Pascal I would've happily continued using Pascal!
> 
> Amusing in the context of Brian's piece, which essentially says if Unix
> could have been written in Pascal, then Pascal wouldn't have been Pascal.
> 
> doug\

My point being that perhaps the success of Unix had more to do
with the success of C than anything else.  And I believe Unix
success had more to with the set of s/w tools it came with
than C. 

For most user programs either language would be been fine. 
Given its evoltion C had the necessary features to implement 
an OS kernel but I believe Pascal could've been easily (&
minimally) extended to something equivalent. Note that Per
Brinch Hansen & his students did write an OS (Solo) in 
Concurrent Pascal[1].

Also note that C itself went through a few iterations while
Pascal was basically the same language that prof. Wirth
defined until 1985.

--bakul

[1] Solo was a university project + it lacked the greatest
strength of Unix (a set of s/w tools).  So it stayed a uni
project. Concurrent Pascal was a significant extension over
sequential Pascal but PBH explained his rationale by way of
his excellent book on Operating System Design!