[fpc-other] slashdot article: The Best First Language For a Young Programmer

[Doug Chamberlin]

Nikolay Nikolov wrote:
> This got me thinking... Pascal used to be _the_ language to learn 
> programming...

The majority view is that Pascal is merely a teaching language. I think 
that's because early Pascal did have some missing features that proved 
to be frustrating for many. Especially because they were common in other 
  languages at the time. More flexible I/O is the one I remember wanting 
the most. As well as better API's to the host OS.

In the 1975-1985 time frame there was also the Unix-based geek view that 
the only language implementation that produced decently efficient code 
was C. The was, and still is, a VERY widespread belief. The only Pascal 
commonly found at that time was UCSD-Pascal, an interpreted environment 
that was way ahead of its time but didn't interface with the host OS 
smoothly.

Turbo Pascal was wildly successful, of course, for a few years, but even 
at its highest point it was being undercut by C and C++.

There is also the fact that no popular OS or other major systems work 
has been done in Pascal. If a Pascal-based, MS-DOS compatible 
alternative OS had come around at the time Windows GUI was introduced it 
might have had a chance.

All those combined to conspire against Pascal's reputation.

A valiant effort was made to make Pascal the "approved" first language 
for teaching programming but even in that role Pascal was replaced by 
Java in the 1990's.

Borland's Delphi was the next big thing in the Pascal world and after a 
solid few years of popularity it is once again struggling.

FPC has helped enormously and is on the rise. So we may see a 
re-emergence sometime soon.

However, I wouldn't want to "fight the good fight" on Pascal's behalf at 
this point. Wasted effort, I think. But if trends change and some 
momentum increases, I'll be there. Always watching!