William Chops" Westfield" wrote:
> (Hmm.  I wonder if I can claim the reverse?  That languages that had
> ANY standardization effort AFTER "C" became known should have paid
> more attention to why C was gaining popularity?  Why didn't Pascal, AS
> A STANDARDIZED LANGUAGE, pick up features that would have made it more
> acceptable as a systems programming language?

First, Pascal didn't come after C, it preceeded it.  However, that wouldn't
have prevented others from trying to standardize their variant later.  I
think the reason is that this wasn't how things were done and how people
were thinking back then.  Remember, this was back when every computer
manufacturer had their own operating system and unique CPU.  About all you
could count on was that a Fortran compiler was available with everything
else pretty much proprietary.  And even then, every vendor had their
proprietary extensions to Fortran to give themselves a competitive
advantange and hopefully lock in their customers a bit.  Those that
developed their own useful Pascal variants saw them like intellectual
property that gave their platform a competitive advantage.  This was the
prevailing mindset until the late 1980s when Sun overtook the workstation
market on the strength of openess.


********************************************************************
Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products
(978) 742-9014.  Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist