Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition

Pascal's Importance and Demise

In 1968, Niklaus Wirth wrote the first Pascal compiler. Pascal was named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal is a good general-purpose programming language, offering support for scientific work as well as business. Pascal's input/ output capabilities are not as advanced as other programming languages used in business, such as COBOL, so it was never a contender for removing COBOL from its business perch. Nevertheless, when released, Pascal was a solid language that did its job well.

Pascal had a huge and fast rise in popularity in the 1970s. Its biggest advantage was that it was the first major language to support structured programming concepts that made for more maintainable programs. (Chapter ...