Yvette Dinh

B2
March 18, 2015
History of Pascal
In the honor of the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal Niklaus Wirth
developed a procedural programming language and named it Pascal. It was designed in 1968 and
published in 1970. It was intended to mainly teach students structured programming. For
undergraduate courses a generation of students used Pascal as an introductory language. Pascals
variants have been used frequently for everything from research projects to PC games. Newer
versions of Pascal compilers that exist are widely used as well. It is primary high-level language
that was used to help development in the Apple Lisa and early years of Macintosh. Pascal runs
of a lot of platforms until Windows, Mac OS, and different versions of UNIX/Linux.It has roots
in the ALGOL 60 language but it also introduces concepts and things that enabled programmers
to define their own complex.
Pascal is an easy language that doesnt require people to learn another language prior. It
is a language that helps you when you start learning the C programming language. The language
is similar in structure and syntax to the C programming language. Delphi is the object oriented
version and the successor of Pascal. Since it is a high-level language it is made up of all those
languages that are problem-oriented. If it were a low-level language it wouldnt be used as much,
as it would make it much harder for the user to understand the structure of the program. Highlevel languages represent their source code so that it is more understandable for the programmer.
Since it is a high-level language it has its own source that needs to be translated into the
CPUs language, also known as machine code. These translators are also known as interpreters
and compilers. The compiler translates source code into object code. The interpreters are slower
than the compilers since it has to be loaded into memory till the end of the translation. In

comparison to compilers it is less practical. It is, however, helpful for correcting our errors in
programs, so its ideal for debugging. The compiler is faster since its single, complete translation
of the program into object code. It compiles the source code, with no syntax errors, and makes a
copy of it. The copy is called the object code and after is is compiled it doesnt need a
recompilation. That is unless the source code is changed so it can make a new object code. This
object code is used by the OS to execute the program.It is a strongly typed language and it offers
extensive error checking, so it means that one type of data cant be coverted or interperted as a
different one without conversions.
The many implementations consist of Early Pascal compilers, Pascal-P system, Object
Pascal, Turbo Pascal, and other variants. The first Pascal compiler was designed in Zurich for the
CDC 6000 series mainframe computer family. It was implemented in Fortran in 1969 and was
unsuccessful due to Fortrans inability to express complex data structures. The Pascal-P system
was made to propagate the language rabidly. A compiler porting kit was created in Zurich that
included a compiler that made a code for a virtual stack machine. A code that lends itself to
reasonably efficient interpretation. Apple Computer created its own LIsa Pascal for the LIsa
Workshop in 1982. They also ported this compiler to Apple Macintosh and MPW in 1895. Also
in 1985 Larry Tesler, with Niklaus, defined Object Pascal.
http://www.pascal-programming.info/index.php
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/pascal/pascal_overview.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_%28programming_language%29