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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

I've used both C and Pascal in embedded systems. Pascal is painful compared to C. A "somewhat modified" version might help, but I doubt it would be enough. To steal a phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch: Pascal was like picking your nose with boxing gloves on. A modified boxing glove isn't really going to solve the problem.

For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified Pascal (Turbo Pascal), why did C/C++ win there, too?

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> For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified Pascal (Turbo Pascal), why did C/C++ win there, too?

Turbo Pascal was quite successful in its day. But Microsoft chose C, and the rest is history. Absent Microsoft's decision, Pascal might still be around.

If you look at early Mac development, for instance, Pascal was actually preferred. C only ended up winning due to being better known, which was a result of the critical mass of programmers trained on Unix and Microsoft's offerings.

That doesn't agree with my experience. I switched from Turbo Pascal to Turbo C in the late 80s while doing DOS development because it was a better tool for the job. It had nothing to do with microsoft or windows (v3.0 was not yet out and few people developed windows apps before v3.0). Pascal (the language) was definitely not preferred for DOS development at that time - it's just that until 1987 there wasn't really C development environment that could compete with Turbo Pascal.

I did some Amiga development back then also and that was exclusively in C with some 68k assembly. I don't really recall anyone hoping for a pascal environment to replace their C tools, but the Amiga OS was more C-oriented than DOS at the time.

> But Microsoft chose C

Ironically, the early Windows API used Pascal calling conventions.

> Pascal might still be around.

Well that's a bit rude. Pascal is still around! And I love it. Behold:

https://www.freepascal.org/

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi

> why did C/C++ win there, too?

Maybe C because of its legacy an ubiquity, and C++ because it was one of the few languages with 1) serious compatibility with C, 2) good featureset, and 3) became an ISO standard

Maybe C because of its legacy an ubiquity

Not in the 80s.

Basically because Microsoft picked C++ to be the main language for Windows development.

Turbo Pascal was all very well but from Microsoft's point of view it was Not Invented Here.

C++ wasn't invented at Microsoft, either. The DOS C++ train had already left the station (Zortech C++) and Microsoft wasn't about to be left behind.

(Zortech didn't invent C++, either, I don't want to give that impression.)

Actually if I remember correctly they were the very last PC C compiler vendor to add support for C++.

> Pascal in embedded systems

aka Modula-2

http://cms.edn.com/ContentEETimes/Documents/ESC%20Proceeding...

I never liked Pascal and I love C, but Bill Atkinson did amazing things with Pascal (see for example https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Hungarian.txt) so it must have something going for it.

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