Pascal
lastmod 2025-12-10created 2025-12-103 edits
Pascal is a programming language developed in 1969 by Niklaus Wirth, a computer scientist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. It was one of the most popular educational languages of its time and was widely used throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
When it was released, Pascal had only the most basic elements of a computer language, so it was insufficient for working with the system directly. The name Pascal comes from the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It is characterized by structured programming using pointers and data structuring.
Because it was influenced by ALGOL 60, a high-level language created for scientific research, it is similar in many ways to C, which was created around the same time under the same influence. However, some features were restricted to keep code concise and make bugs easier to catch, and as a result it became a less versatile language than C. That does not mean it is entirely impractical; in fact, it was used to create TeX and the early Macintosh operating system. Recently[when?], with major improvements to Pascal compilers themselves and advances in software development technology, these minor differences have become a nearly negligible drawback. Uses assembly directly.
Today, many parts have been added to and improved over the original Pascal, and by borrowing the strengths of other languages, Delphi, a commercial Pascal compiler, has almost no difference in features from C++.