Pascal is a computer programming language developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth. It was designed to teach structured programming concepts and is still used today in education and software development. The language is named after Blaise Pascal, who helped pioneer computers. Pascal is based on ALGOL and has gained commercial recognition. It uses English keywords and has differences from the C family of languages. The original compiler was written in Fortran, but later compilers were written in Pascal and can recompile themselves.
Developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth, Pascal is a computer programming language. It is an imperative language that is considered a viable option for structured programming. The language’s original purpose was to help teach structured programming concepts to college students, and teachers have used it as an introductory programming language for many years. Although it was created decades ago, versions are still in use today in the education and software development industries.
The language was named in honor of Blaise Pascal, a French-born mathematician and physicist who helped pioneer the development of computers. He is credited with designing the first arithmetic machine in 1641, often considered the earliest ancestor of modern computers. Pascal was also a religious philosopher.
In developing the computer language, Wirth based it on ALGOL, a computer programming language developed in 1960. Wirth designed Pascal with two primary goals in mind. First, it was created to provide a useful language for teaching programming in a systematic way with clear and fundamental concepts. Second, he built it to provide a reliable and efficient implementation, trying to fill the gaps left by other computer programming languages available at the time.
Pascal surpassed Wirth’s original goals. He has gained commercial recognition that has actually surpassed the interest of those involved in education. The computer programming language enjoyed great popularity in the 1970s, as it served many system and application software needs. It was implemented on over 80 computer systems by the end of the decade.
The original language is procedural and features traditional ALGOL-based structures. It also has many data structures and abstractions that differ from ALGOL, however, such as enums, records, and sets. Type definitions and pointers also vary from the original. Despite such differences, it is still considered to be much more similar to the ALGOL programming language than those belonging to the C family of languages.
Comparing it to the C language family, one thing that stands out is the use of English keywords: where C uses symbols, Pascal uses real words. However, C is more like ALGOL in terms of simple declarations. It uses the type name and variable name syntax while Pascal avoids such syntax in favor of providing educational settings with clearer syntax. There are other differences between languages as well.
The original Pascal compiler became operational in 1970 and was created for the CDC 600 series mainframe computer and was written in the Fortran programming language. Compilers created after 1975 have generally been written in Pascal, and usually these compilers can recompile themselves to include new features of the language. A compiler can also recompile itself when ported to a different environment.
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