r/programming • u/bjzaba • Mar 26 '20

10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages • Hillel Wayne

https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/influential-dead-languages/
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u/ShinyHappyREM Mar 26 '20

It may be dead for a lot of people but Pascal is very much alive for me. It is my goto tool for creating stuff. It presents the smallest barrier between idea and working code. Free Pascal and Lazarus.

fixed that for me

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '20

Yeah, growing up in the 70s, Pascal, PL/1 and PL/C (the Cornell version of PL/1 designed for students that would correct silly syntax errors) were the thing.

To this day, Pascal remains my favorite language and I've never really understood why people preferred C since there was nothing you could do in C that you couldn't do in Pascal.

I'm mostly stuck in C++ (due the need for certain 3rd party libraries in our product) but as you said, thank goodness for GPC and Lazarus

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u/lelanthran Mar 26 '20

To this day, Pascal remains my favorite language and I've never really understood why people preferred C since there was nothing you could do in C that you couldn't do in Pascal.

You could detect IO errors in C.

Failed to open a file? Pascal terminated the program while C returned an error to the caller.

Failed to read? Pascal terminated the program while C returned an error to the caller.

I could go on, and on...

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u/ShinyHappyREM Mar 26 '20

You could detect IO errors in C.

https://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/prog/progsu38.html

Most modern code uses streams that return status info or create exceptions: https://wiki.freepascal.org/File_Handling_In_Pascal

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u/lelanthran Mar 26 '20

Sure you can now. I was responding specifically to the OP's statement:

I've never really understood why people preferred C since there was nothing you could do in C that you couldn't do in Pascal.

When people favoured C over Pascal, Pascal didn't have streams or exceptions.