Pascals Origins

[Henry Spencer]

> > ... Wirth designed Pascal as a teaching...
> Wrong! Even Wirth denied that.

Curious, he said quite explicitly in his early Pascal papers that it
was designed primarily as a teaching language.

> ...no provisions for
> separate compilation. Everything in one source file, and they make
> people write large scale projects in it? Pure insanity.

Wirth definitely had his head screwed on wrong when he did that.  The
idea behind it was that a fast compiler could recompile stuff more
quickly than a linkage editor could link it in, so why bother with the
extra type-checking hassles?  The compilers he was thinking of were
the early Pascal compilers, which were simple and fast; the linkage
editor he was thinking of was the OS/360 one, a notorious pig.  In more
recent times he has come to his senses.

Many of Root-Boy's other complaints about Pascal can be covered with a
single observation:  Pascal is over 15 years old.  It's not surprising
that it has a lot of problems by modern standards.

> 	(Root Boy) Jim Cottrell		<rbj at icst-cmr.arpa>
> You should all JUMP UP AND DOWN for TWO HOURS while I decide on a NEW CAREER!!

Jim, if you're really gonna pick a new career, something that will take you
away from your keyboard forever, and jumping up and down for two hours will
help, a lot of people will do it!
-- 
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