[fpc-pascal] History of the Cardinal data type?

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Dmitry Boyarintsev said:
> > So I definitely see the benefit in using (U)Int<xx> style data types.
> > They are a lot more obvious [to the programmer] regarding data ranges
> > and byte size.
> >
> 
> Does, it also make the code less high-level?
> Didn't high level use the platform independent notation such as "int" or
> "word" to be portable across different platforms back in 60s 70s?

Maybe in theory, and even then only if you include <32-bit targets.

Moreover that was just a minor help anyway, and even in old times (80s,90s)
most people fixated their types anyway to make sure the type was large
enough.

And then there is the fact that in FPC integer is mode dependent rather than
being the best (speediest) type for calculation on the target hardware.