Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!gatech!udel!burdvax!bbking!rmarks
From: rmarks@KSP.Unisys.COM (Richard Marks)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Pascal dying out?
Keywords: 20 years, TRUE?
Message-ID: <641@bbking.KSP.Unisys.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 88 13:41:41 GMT
References: <267@lafcol.UUCP>
Organization: Unisys/Knowledge Systems Organization, Frazer, PA
Lines: 28

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 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.

Boy will this start a discussion.  I want to put in my 2 cents.  Before
I turn flames on let me say that I Pascal is my language of preference and
I do a lot of coding in it.

Note however that there is a factor of ten more messages in the "c" newsgroup
as compared to the "pascal" group.  But when I look at the "c" group I keep
laughing at the semantic and syntactic bullshit the questions are about.
Most of the crap they ask about is covered transparently in pascal.  Honestly
who wants to get involved in if a declaration should be func (**int(*char)) or
not?

But face it guys, pascal is really not portable.  How many lines of Turbo P do
we have that will never get to Unix.  I think pascal was really little used, 
except in college courses, until Borland gave us TurboP.  Now that we also have
Turbo C and since "c" will run on almost any box, "c" will swamp pascal.

Now what will happen if Borland gives us pascal on Unix ??  

Richard Marks
rmarks@KSP.unisys.COM