Contrary to popular belief, Pascal is not dead but very much alive and kicking. Over the decades many languages and frameworks come and go - however Pascal is one of the languages that is still very relevant today, but not in the mainstream sense.
Pascal is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed by Niklaus Wirth in the early 1970s. It was developed for teaching programming as a systematic discipline and to develop reliable and efficient programs.
Pascal is Algol-based language and includes many constructs of Algol. Algol 60 is a subset of Pascal. Pascal offers several data types and programming structures. It is easy to understand and maintain the Pascal programs.
Pascal has grown in popularity in the teaching and academics arena for various reasons:
- Easy to learn.
- Structured language.
- It produces transparent, efficient and reliable programs.
- It can be compiled on a variety of computer platforms.
Acoording to many people that in the 1980s, and perhaps in the 1990s too, Pascal and C were pretty much head-to-head as production languages.
Is the ultimate demise of Pascal only due to Borland's neglect of Delphi? Or was there more, such as C being a more robust language? If the latter, what were the perceived advantages of C over Pascal?
Pascal allows the programmers to define complex structured data types and build dynamic and recursive data structures, such as lists, trees and graphs. Pascal offers features like records, enumerations, subranges, dynamically allocated variables with associated pointers and sets.
Pascal allows nested procedure definitions to any level of depth. This truly provides a great programming environment for learning programming as a systematic discipline based on the fundamental concepts.
Among the most amazing implementations of Pascal are −
- Skype
- Total Commander
- TeX
- Macromedia Captivate
- Apple Lisa
- Various PC Games
- Embedded Systems
The fact Is Pascal an obsolete language? Yes it is but still use in some places. I hope you like this blog. To learn more visit HawksCode and Easyshiksha.
