22 Jun
2026
22 Jun
'26
10:37 a.m.
On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 3:02 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I heard that all of the Lisa OS, and much of
Macintosh, were written in Pascal.
(obviously other than some low-level drivers and performance critical routines?)
Is that correct?
http://pascal.hansotten.com/apple-lisa-pascal/
I remember seeing articles about Pascal and the Lisa in 1983, and I
definitely read in "Inside Macintosh" (the "hernia manuals") in 1984
that there was a Pascal calling convention for various toolbox
functions. As I read it, you were expected to write your apps in
Pascal or Assembler. C wasn't an option for me (I didn't start
learning it until the following year, on a VAX running UNIX), and I
wanted no part in Pascal. Totally put me off developing for the Mac.
When did Macintosh development switch to C?
System 7 (early 90s) AFAIK.
-ethan