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Recollections about the development of Pascal

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N. WirthAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, Issue 3

Pages 333 - 342

https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155378

Published: 01 March 1993 Publication History

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Abstract

Pascal was defined in 1970 and, after a slow start, became one of the most widely used languages in introductory programming courses. This article first summarises the events leading to Pascal's design and implementation, and then proceeds with a discussion of some of the language's merits and deficiencies. In the last part, developments that followed its release are recounted. Its influence chiefly derived from its being a vehicle for structured programming and a basis for further development of languages and for experiments in program verification.

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Cited By

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Parker KDavey B(2012)The History of Computer Language SelectionReflections on the History of Computing10.1007/978-3-642-33899-1_12(166-179)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33899-1_12
Kelleher CPausch R(2005)Lowering the barriers to programmingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/1089733.108973437:2(83-137)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1089733.1089734
WILKES M(1995)From FORTRAN and ALGOL to Object-Oriented LanguagesComputing Perspectives10.1016/B978-0-08-050268-7.50013-9(93-101)Online publication date: 1995
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-050268-7.50013-9
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Index Terms

Recollections about the development of Pascal
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types

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Reviews

Reviewer: David Alan Studebaker

This delightful gem of a paper is both enjoyable and informative. Wirth discusses the history of Pascal with rare candor and a wry sense of humor. The origins of Pascal are rooted in meetings that took place in the mid-1960s on the extension of Algol 60. Wirth was the spokesperson for one faction of the Algol Working Group, presenting a proposal that was rejected in favor of a more elaborate proposal. The winning proposal led to Algol 68, which in turn led to Algol's demise as a serious contender for commercial attention. The losing proposal became the basis for Wirth's design of Pascal. The process left Wirth with an abiding distrust of the process of decision making by committee. Wirth traces the development of Pascal through the mainframe environment to minicomputers and thence to microcomputers. He describes a number of milestones that came from the efforts surrounding Pascal development and use, including the development of the P-system, which supports portable software tools. It is evident that Wirth's principal interest in Pascal has been as a teaching tool but that he takes pride in its acceptance for commercial use. He follows the path of Pascal development through to Modula-2 and Oberon, which he says could be referred to as Pascal-2 and Pascal-3. Wirth's comments give extensive credit to a number of individuals and organizations for the eventual success of Pascal, but he makes it clear that he feels that the more important events were due to the actions and efforts of individuals rather than organizations. For anyone who wants an interesting, informative, personal view from one of the most renowned designers of computer languages, this paper is perfect.

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 28, Issue 3

March 1993

363 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/155360

Editor:
Richard L. Wexelblat
ACM SIGPLAN Notices; IDA/CSED, Alexandria, VA

Issue’s Table of Contents

HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages
April 1993
370 pages
ISBN:0897915704
DOI:10.1145/154766
Conference Chair:
John A. N. Lee,
Program Chair:
Jean E. Sammet

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 March 1993

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 28, Issue 3

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Cited By

View all

Parker KDavey B(2012)The History of Computer Language SelectionReflections on the History of Computing10.1007/978-3-642-33899-1_12(166-179)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33899-1_12
Kelleher CPausch R(2005)Lowering the barriers to programmingACM Computing Surveys10.1145/1089733.108973437:2(83-137)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1089733.1089734
WILKES M(1995)From FORTRAN and ALGOL to Object-Oriented LanguagesComputing Perspectives10.1016/B978-0-08-050268-7.50013-9(93-101)Online publication date: 1995
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-050268-7.50013-9
King KMogilensky JBalfour B(1993)Modula-3Proceedings of the tenth annual Washington Ada symposium on Ada: Ada's role in software engineering10.1145/260096.260334(147-154)Online publication date: 28-Jun-1993
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/260096.260334
Pearce DElsman MGrelck CKloeckner APadua DSolomonik E(2017)Array programming in WhileyProceedings of the 4th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Libraries, Languages, and Compilers for Array Programming10.1145/3091966.3091972(17-24)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3091966.3091972
Davey BParker K(2006)Language History — A Tale of Two CountriesHistory of Computing and Education 2 (HCE2)10.1007/978-0-387-34741-7_10(139-151)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2006
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34741-7_10
Wirth N(2000)The Development of Procedural Programming Languages Personal Contributions and PerspectivesModular Programming Languages10.1007/10722581_1(1-10)Online publication date: 2000
https://doi.org/10.1007/10722581_1

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