22 Jun
2026
22 Jun
'26
10:52 a.m.
On Jun 22, 2026, at 1:37 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 3:02 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Interesting. Perhaps it's because the first language I learned was ALGOL (at TU
Eindhoven) but I really liked Pascal. I learned it on the PDP-10 after we managed to
convince our compiler construction professor to stop requiring us to use PL/C (the
Carnegie-Mellon implementation of PL/I, utterly unreliable if you used macros which we had
to do a lot). I went from zero knowledge to a complete code generator for our compiler
(about 1300 lines of code) in one week. That sort of learning curve has only happened one
other time in my career, with Python.
Then again, we know that tastes in language vary all over the place...
paul
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.