Turbo Pascal version 1.0 - Niklaus Wirth and the road to Pascal
The story of Turbo Pascal version 1.0 cannot be written without writing about Niklaus Wirth and the road to the Pascal programming language.
How did Pascal arrive on the scene in the computing industry? Programming in the early computer years was dominated by a few programming languages including Fortran, COBOL, Basic, PL/I, Lisp, Assembler, and Algol languages. As programs grew larger and more complex, research was taking place to help reduce the problems and causes of programming mistakes.
Structured programming and strict type checking were two of the solutions proposed by programming luminaries including Edsger Dijkstra, C.A.R. ""Tony" Hoare, Ole-Johan Dahl, Niklaus Wirth, and others.
Algol, defined by an international committee, was the first language to introduce block structured programming. Niklaus Wirth was one of the committee members. Niklaus Wirth and Tony Hoare, as a result of discussions in IFIP WG2.1 on a successor of Algol 60, proposed Algol-W with Tony Hoare in 1965 and implemented on the IBM 360. Algol-W added pointer types and record handling.
In lectures, articles, and books, Niklaus Wirth describes the history of (and road to) Pascal. The Pascal language was specifically highlighted at the ACM "History of Programming Languages Conference II" held in Cambridge Massachusettes April 1993.
In a lecture presented at the ACM "History of Programming Languages Conference III" in San Diego California June 2007, Niklaus Wirth talked about his work on the international Algol committee and the creation of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon:
There are many books and articles by Wirth and about the history of Pascal including:
Thank you Niklaus Wirth, for the Pascal language!
How did Pascal arrive on the scene in the computing industry? Programming in the early computer years was dominated by a few programming languages including Fortran, COBOL, Basic, PL/I, Lisp, Assembler, and Algol languages. As programs grew larger and more complex, research was taking place to help reduce the problems and causes of programming mistakes.
Structured programming and strict type checking were two of the solutions proposed by programming luminaries including Edsger Dijkstra, C.A.R. ""Tony" Hoare, Ole-Johan Dahl, Niklaus Wirth, and others.
Algol, defined by an international committee, was the first language to introduce block structured programming. Niklaus Wirth was one of the committee members. Niklaus Wirth and Tony Hoare, as a result of discussions in IFIP WG2.1 on a successor of Algol 60, proposed Algol-W with Tony Hoare in 1965 and implemented on the IBM 360. Algol-W added pointer types and record handling.
In lectures, articles, and books, Niklaus Wirth describes the history of (and road to) Pascal. The Pascal language was specifically highlighted at the ACM "History of Programming Languages Conference II" held in Cambridge Massachusettes April 1993.
In a lecture presented at the ACM "History of Programming Languages Conference III" in San Diego California June 2007, Niklaus Wirth talked about his work on the international Algol committee and the creation of Pascal, Modula-2, and Oberon:
- Pascal was “My idea of the successor of Algol 60”
- Pascal was designed “free from the strings of a committee”
- Pascal was strongly influenced by the new ideas of “Structured Programming” from Edsger Dijkstra and C.A.R. “Tony” Hoare.
- Pascal was designed in 1968, implemented in 1968-1970. Published in 1970. A compiler ready at the same time.
- Pascal was successful in teaching Computer Science and programming due to its clear structure and ready availability at low cost. The language was more widely used that Wirth expected.
- The first compiler implementations were Pascal-S, Pascal-P
- Two implementations that made Pascal popular were UCSD Pascal and Turbo Pascal.
- Pascal invaded the schools and homes because of the $50 price points of the two compilers with their short compile/debug/fix cycles!
There are many books and articles by Wirth and about the history of Pascal including:
- PASCAL - User Manual and Report. Niklaus Wirth (with Kathy Jensen) Springer-Verlag, 1974.
- The Programming Language Pascal. Acta Informatica, 1, (Jun 1971) 35-63. also in Programming Language Design, A.I.Wasserman, Ed., IEEE Computer Society Press, 1980
- The Development of Procedural Programming Languages. Personal Contributions and Perspectives.
Springer-Verlag, LNCS 1897 , Proc. JMLC, Zurich, Sept. 2000. - Pascal and its Successors. In Software Pioneers, M. Broy and E. Denert, Eds. Springer-Verlag, 2002
- Pascal and its Successors - Niklaus Wirth, Swiss Delphi Center, article, September 25, 2002.
- N. Wirth. Recollections about the Development of Pascal. In T.J. Bergin, R.G. Gibson. History of Programming Languages II, Addison-Wesley 1996, ISBN 0-201-89502-1.
- A Brief History of Pascal
- The Programming Language Pascal (Revised Report), ETH Zurich, November 1972.
- The School of Niklaus Wirth: The Art of Simplicity. Morgan Kaufmann, October 2000. ISBN 1558607234.
- A Few Words with Niklaus Wirth, by Dr. Carlo Pescio, Published in Software Development, Vol. 5 No. 6, June 1997.
- Pascal-S: A Subset and its Implementation, by N. Wirth. Text file contains the source code for the interpreter.
Thank you Niklaus Wirth, for the Pascal language!
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Comments
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Monday, 10 November 2008And its last name is Wirth, not Writh...
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Monday, 10 November 2008
I think I caught all of the mistakes in Niklaus Wirth's name. If I missed any, please let me know. And thanks for pointing them out.
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Monday, 10 November 2008
I would add to the list of books a real classic by Niklaus Wirth http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Structures-Prentice-Hall-Automatic-Computation/dp/0130224189" rel="nofollow">Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs"
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Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Is there anybody here besides me who actually used ALGOL 60?
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Mr. Wirth's first name is "Niklaus" - no "ck" in there - as you could see easily from his own web site (and mentioned in one of the books listed about Pascal....)