Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ncar!boulder!ccncsu!handel.colostate.edu.!kolb
From: kolb@handel.colostate.edu. (Denny Kolb - Professor of Existential Metaphysics )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Pascal dying out?
Summary: Not in the near future at least.
Message-ID: <460@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Date: 15 Oct 88 00:35:38 GMT
References: <267@lafcol.UUCP>
Sender: news@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU
Reply-To: kolb@handel.colostate.edu..UUCP (Denny Kolb)
Organization: Colorado State University, Ft. Collins CO 80526
Lines: 48
Keywords:

In article <267@lafcol.UUCP> galvinp@lafcol.UUCP (Galvin Paul ) writes:
>
>.....there is a certain
>element that seems to think that Pascal is dying out.  They say that
>in 20 years, it will be long gone.
>
>Is there any basis for this?  

    I don't really see anything that would justify that kind of pessimism.

   I have been hearing for at least 10 years now, that FORTRAN is destined for
the 'scrap heap of computerdom', but at last report, it is comming along quite 
well.  

   Granted, as a 'real world', production language, Pascal leaves much to be
desired.  However, Pascal was never intended for an environment such as that.
Pascal is first and formost, a teaching language, and as such it has no equal.
(Would you REALLY want to learn 'C' as a First Language???)

   I am currently teaching the Intro Pascal course here at CSU, and as a 
first language Pascal does remarkably well.  Pascal enables the student to learn
the various laguage constructs, such as Looping, Selection, Arrays, Data 
Abstraction, etc.  Without having to learn all of the extraneous garbage that 
generally go along with them in a more conventional language.

>I hardly see anyone who is in the
>business of writing programs or such and I would not be able to
>determine the truth of this.

  I am a little confused as to what you mean by 'in the business', but I assume
that you are refering to the more 'real world' sorts of programming here.  

  If this is true, then in this area, I think Pascal is already  gone.  I doubt
that many, if any, companies involved in large programming projects are actively
using Pascal in their Day-to-Day programming activities.  There are several
reasons for this, but primarily, Pascal lacks most of the file handling 
capabilities that are essential for any kind of realistic software package.  

  There is a language called Modula-II which was also written by N. Wirth, that
does have these file-handling routines, and other such stuff.  I have never
written in M-II, but people who have tell me that it has a syntax that is
very similar to Pascal.  Modula-II still tends to be somewhat obscure, so I
have no idea if it has an industial following or not.

Well, I've rambled on for long enough.  Hope this clears up your confusion.

Regards,
Denny