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From: weikart@prl.dec.com (Chris Weikart)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula3
Subject: Re: running out of memory
Message-ID: <1991Feb12.145014.13707@prl.dec.com>
Date: 12 Feb 91 14:50:14 GMT
References: <9102080401.AA29237@jumbo.pa.dec.com> <jr5onv9pm@snitor.uucp> <42601@super.ORG>
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Reply-To: weikart@prl.dec.com (Chris Weikart)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - Paris Research Laboratory
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In article <42601@super.ORG> rminnich@super.ORG (Ronald G Minnich) writes:

> It is worth remembering that 13 or so years ago the choice was
> between a real low-level language (C) and a nicer language (from many
> points of view) Pascal. It is amazing how similar the arguments
> are back then and now between, e.g., Mod 3 and C++. Some of them
> are identical (initialization, for example)! 
>
> Problem was, Pascal tended to blow your
> program out of the water on failed file opens, failed memory allocs, 
> and so on. While Pascal was nice from many points of view, its 
> unrealistic model for programming (e.g. if you can't alloc, die)
> rendered it useless for most people, and, sad to say, C won.

It wasn't so simple. Pascal "lost" partly because of various rigidities,
but mostly because of U*ix.