Olin Lathrop wrote:

> Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> Turbo Pascal was very popular. At some point, it probably was the most
>> popular development environment on CP/M and MS-DOS. I think the main
>> reason why it didn't "take over" like C was the lack of standardization
>> and the proliferation of dialects.
> 
> Neither of those reasons make sense.  Turbo Pascal was a single language
> that was well defined.  There were no dialects.

Turbo Pascal was not a language, it was a dialect from a single vendor
-- one of many Pascal dialects. The C code I wrote in the 80ies still
compiles on modern compilers for CPUs that didn't even exist back then;
Turbo Pascal is dead for all practical purposes, and so is the code I
wrote for it. There you go... this is a good enough reason for many
companies not to bet on Pascal. 

Lack of standardization is /the/ point. A commercially successful
language needs to have enough power that people believe it will still be
successful in a decade or more. Borland alone is not good enough; Embed
Inc alone isn't enough; Microsoft alone may be. All others need an
international standard (like there is for C).

Fact is that there is no universally accepted Pascal dialect. You didn't
use Turbo Pascal or Delphi (arguably the most successful Pascal
dialect); you used Apollo Pascal for your own implementation. 


> I think the reasons C eventually dominated were because there were
> several free or low cost C compilers out there for a wide range of
> systems, 

Why was this, you think? Why did the C community make compilers
available, and the Pascal community didn't? C originated in a commercial
venue, Pascal originated in a university. Should've been the other way
'round... :)


> ... and there were (even more than today) a large group of programmers
> lacking the maturity, discipline, and experience to see the
> advantages of a tightly typed language like Pascal.

This is pretty odd thinking, to say the least. C is not a safe language.
To produce anything of reasonable size in C, you need to have /more/
discipline and experience than in better typed languages, not less. Same
goes for assembly, FWIW. (Which is not a surprise, given that C is more
a portable assembly than anything else.)


> Eventually C got past the critical mass stage where you had to use it.  

Pascal had its shot. When I started to program on PCs, Turbo Pascal was
/the/ environment, it had the critical mass. Everybody programmed in
Turbo Pascal. C compilers were very rare to find. Borland seemed to have
decided not to standardize it, which probably would have meant opening
the market up to other vendors, and squandered the advantage. 


> I think we all agree that's where we are today.  All my point is that
> while we may be forced to use C today, we should complain about it
> whenever possible.

Complaining without suggesting an alternative doesn't do much good, most
of the time. You keep saying "Pascal", but not exactly /which/ Pascal.
As long as there is not "the" Pascal, just pointing to "Pascal" doesn't
do any good. Somebody should put their money into their words and
standardize Pascal in some usable form. Then maybe it starts to pick up.
Until then, it's not much more than a pipe dream. A nice one at that,
but still... :)

Gerhard
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