chapter

Free access

Recollections about the development of Pascal

Author:

N. WirthAuthors Info & Claims

History of programming languages---II

January 1996

Pages 97 - 120

https://doi.org/10.1145/234286.1057812

Published: 01 January 1996 Publication History

Abstract

Pascal was defined in 1970 and, after a slow start, became one of the most widely used languages in introductory programming courses. This article first summarizes the events leading to Pascal's design and implementation, and then proceeds with a discussion of some of the language's merits and deficiencies. In the last part, developments that followed its release are recounted. Its influence chiefly derived from its being a vehicle for structured programming and a basis for further development of languages and for experiments in program verification.

References

[1]

{Ammann, 1974} Ammann, U., The Method of Structured Programming Applied to the Development of a Compiler, in International Computing Symposium 1973, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1974, pp. 93--99.]]

[2]

{Ammann, 1977} Ammann, U., On Code Generation in a Pascal Compiler, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 7, 1977, pp. 391--423.]]

[3]

{Barnes, 1980} Barnes, An Overwiew of Ada, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 10, 1980, pp. 851--887.]]

[4]

{Bowles, 1980} Bowles, K. L., Problem Solving Using Pascal. Springer-Verlag, 1977.]]

Digital Library

[5]

{Brinch Hansen, 1975} Brinch Hansen, P., The Programming Language Concurrent Pascal, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1975, pp. 199--207.]]

Digital Library

[6]

{Bron, 1976} Bron, C., and W. de Vries, A Pascal Compiler for the PDP-11 Minicomputers, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 6, 1976, pp. 109--116.]]

[7]

{Clark, 1982} Clark, R., and S. Koehler, The UCSD Pascal Handbook, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982.]]

Digital Library

[8]

{Cooper, 1983} Cooper, D., Standard Pascal, User Reference Manual, Norton, 1983.]]

Digital Library

[9]

{Dijkstra, 1966} Dijkstra, E. W., Structured Programming, Technical Report, University of Eindhoven, 1966. Also in Dahl, O.-J. et al,. Structured Programming, London: Academic Press, 1972.]]

[10]

{Grosse-Lindemann, 1976} Grosse-Lindemann, C. O., and H. H. Nagel, Postlude to a Pascal-Compiler Bootstrap on a DECSystem-10, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 6, 1976, pp. 29--42.]]

[11]

{Habermann, 1973} Habermann, A. N., Critical Comments on the Programming Language Pascal, Acta Informatica Vol. 3, 1973, pp. 47--57.]]

Digital Library

[12]

{Hoare, 1972} Hoare, C. A. R., Notes on Data Structuring, in Dahl, O.-J. et al., Structured Programming, London: Academic Press, 1972.]]

Digital Library

[13]

{Hoare, 1973} Hoare, C. A. R. and N. Wirth, An Axiomatic Definition of the Programming Language Pascal, Acta Informatica, Vol. 2, 1973, pp. 335--355.]]

Digital Library

[14]

{Hoare, 1980} Hoare, C. A. R., The Emperor's Old Clothes. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 24, No. 2, Feb. 1980, pp. 75--83.]]

Digital Library

[15]

{ISO, 1983} International Organization for Standardization, Specification for Computer Programming Language Pascal, ISO 7185, 1982.]]

[16]

{Jensen, 1974} Jensen, K., and N. Wirth, Pascal---User Manual and Report, Springer-Verlag, 1974.]]

Digital Library

[17]

{Jensen, 1991} Jensen, K., and N. Wirth, revised by A. B. Mickel and J. F. Miner. Pascal---User Manual and Report, ISO Pascal Standard, Springer-Verlag, 1991.]]

Digital Library

[18]

{Lecarme, 1975} Lecarme, O., and P. Desjardins, More Comments on the Programming Language Pascal, Acta Informatica, Vol. 4, 1975, pp. 231--243.]]

Digital Library

[19]

{Ledgard, 1984} Ledgard, H., The American Pascal Standard, Springer-Verlag, 1984.]]

Digital Library

[20]

{London, 1978} London, R. L., J. V. Guttag, J. J. Horning, B. W. Lampson, J. G. Mitchell, and G. J. Popek, Proof Rules for the Programming Language Euclid, Acta Informatica, Vol. 10, 1978, pp. 1--26.]]

[21]

{Marmier, 1975} Marmier, E., Automatic Verification of Pascal Programs, ETH Dissertation No. 5629, Zurich, 1975.]]

[22]

{Mitchell, 1978} Mitchell, J. G., W. Maybury, R. Sweet, Mesa Language Manual, Xerox PARC Report CSL-78-1, 1978.]]

[23]

{Naur, 1963} Naur, P., Ed., Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 3, 1960, pp. 299--316; Communications of the ACM, Vol. 6, 1963, pp. 1--17.]]

Digital Library

[24]

{Nori, 1981} Nori, K. V. et al., The Pascal P-code Compiler: Implementation Notes, in Pascal---The Language and Its Implementation. D. W. Barron, ed., New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981.]]

[25]

{Tesler, 1985} Tesler, L., Object Pascal Report,. Structured Programming (formerly Structured Language World), Vol. 9, No. 3, 1985, pp. 10--14.]]

[26]

{van Wijngaarden, 1969} van Wijngaarden, A., Ed., Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68, Numer. Math. Vol. 14, 1969, pp. 79--218.]]

[27]

{Welsh, 1972} Welsh, J., and C. Quinn, A Pascal Compiler for ICL 1900 Series Computers, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 2, 1972, pp. 73--77.]]

[28]

{Welsh, 1977} Welsh, J., W. J. Sneeringer, and C. A. R. Hoare, Ambiguities and Insecurities in Pascal, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 7, 1977, pp. 685--696. Also in D. W. Barron, Ed., Pascal---The Language and its Implementation, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981.]]

Digital Library

[29]

{Welsh, 1984} Welsh, J., and D. Bustard, Sequential Program Structures, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.]]

Digital Library

[30]

{Welsh, 1986} Welsh, J., and A. Hay, A Model Implementation of Standard Pascal. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986.]]

Digital Library

[31]

{Wichmann, 1983} Wichmann, B., and Ciechanowicz, Pascal Compiler Validation, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983.]]

Digital Library

[32]

{Wirth, 1966} Wirth, N. and C. A. R. Hoare, A Contribution to the Development of ALGOL, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 9, No. 6, June 1966, pp. 413--432.]]

Digital Library

[33]

{Wirth, 1970} Wirth, N., The Programming Language Pascal, Techical Report 1, Fachgruppe Computer-Wissenschaften, ETH, Nov. 1970; Acta Informatica, Vol. 1, 1971, pp. 35--63.]]

[34]

{Wirth, 1971a} Wirth, N., Program Development by Step-wise Refinement, Commnications of the ACM, Vol. 14, No. 4, Apr. 1977, pp. 221--227.]]

Digital Library

[35]

{Wirth, 1971b} Wirth, N., The Design of a Pascal Compiler, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 1, 1971, pp. 309--333.]]

[36]

{Wirth, 1975} Wirth, N. An assessment of the programming language Pascal. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 2, June 1975, pp. 192--198.]]

Digital Library

[37]

{Wirth, 1981} Wirth, N., Pascal-S: A Subset and its Implementation, in Pascal---The Language and its Implementation, D. W. Barron, Ed., New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981.]]

[38]

{Wirth, 1982} Wirth, N., Programming in Modula-2, Springer-Verlag, 1982.]]

Digital Library

[39]

{Wirth, 1988} Wirth, N., The Programming Language Oberon, Software---Practice and Experience, Vol. 18, No. 7, July 1988, pp. 671--690.]]

Digital Library

Cited By

Statter DArmoni M(2020)Teaching Abstraction in Computer Science to 7th Grade StudentsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/337214320:1(1-37)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3372143
Garousi VGiray GTuzun E(2019)Understanding the Knowledge Gaps of Software EngineersACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/336049720:1(1-33)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360497
Romashchenko AZimand M(2019)An Operational Characterization of Mutual Information in Algorithmic Information TheoryJournal of the ACM10.1145/335686766:5(1-42)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3356867
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Recollections about the development of Pascal

Recommendations

Recollections about the development of Pascal

Pascal was defined in 1970 and, after a slow start, became one of the most widely used languages in introductory programming courses. This article first summarises the events leading to Pascal's design and implementation, and then proceeds with a ...
Recollections about the development of Pascal
HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages

Pascal was defined in 1970 and, after a slow start, became one of the most widely used languages in introductory programming courses. This article first summarises the events leading to Pascal's design and implementation, and then proceeds with a ...
An introduction to object-oriented programming through Turbo Pascal

This paper presents three introductory concepts of object-oriented programming: encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism. The specific implementation for these concepts and other terms presented, is the language Turbo Pascal (5.5 or later). The ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other Books

History of programming languages---II

January 1996

880 pages

ISBN:0201895021

DOI:10.1145/234286

Editors:
Thomas J. Bergin
The American University, Washington, D.C.
,
Richard G. Gibson
The American University, Washington, D.C.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 1996

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Qualifiers

Chapter

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

15
Total Citations
View Citations
1,252
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)293
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)25

Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Statter DArmoni M(2020)Teaching Abstraction in Computer Science to 7th Grade StudentsACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/337214320:1(1-37)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3372143
Garousi VGiray GTuzun E(2019)Understanding the Knowledge Gaps of Software EngineersACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/336049720:1(1-33)Online publication date: 13-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3360497
Romashchenko AZimand M(2019)An Operational Characterization of Mutual Information in Algorithmic Information TheoryJournal of the ACM10.1145/335686766:5(1-42)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3356867
Ardimento PBernardi MCimitile MRuvo G(2019)Reusing Bugged Source Code to Support Novice Programmers in Debugging TasksACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/335561620:1(1-24)Online publication date: 22-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3355616
Bernstein AHolm JRotenberg E(2019)Online Bipartite Matching with Amortized O(log 2 n) ReplacementsJournal of the ACM10.1145/334499966:5(1-23)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3344999
Iwata SOki TTakamatsu M(2019)Index Reduction for Differential-algebraic Equations with Mixed MatricesJournal of the ACM10.1145/334149966:5(1-34)Online publication date: 20-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341499
Komargodski INaor MYogev E(2019)White-Box vs. Black-Box Complexity of Search ProblemsJournal of the ACM10.1145/334110666:5(1-28)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3341106
S. KLaekhanukit BManurangsi P(2019)On the Parameterized Complexity of Approximating Dominating SetJournal of the ACM10.1145/332511666:5(1-38)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3325116
Dagienė V(2018)Resurgence of Informatics Education in SchoolsAdventures Between Lower Bounds and Higher Altitudes10.1007/978-3-319-98355-4_30(522-537)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98355-4_30
Sutcliffe RKowarsch BDhanjal SAhmed F(2016)Closing the Barn DoorProceedings of the 21st Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education10.1145/2910925.2910938(1-15)Online publication date: 6-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2910925.2910938
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Chapter

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten