Part of IBM restructure was unloading vlsi tools on industry tool vendor
... and they required it run on SUN platforms (pervasive in the
industry). I got a contract to port a 50,000 statement vs/pascal VLSI >application to SUN (pascal ... in retrospect it would have been easier
to have rewitten it in "C"). SUN pascal appeared to have been limited to >educational uses *AND* support had been outsourced to an organization on
the opposite side of the planet (easy to walk into sun hdqtrs, but
didn't actually help a lot).
In article <87h5iizglt.fsf@localhost>, Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote:
[snip]
Part of IBM restructure was unloading vlsi tools on industry tool vendor
... and they required it run on SUN platforms (pervasive in the
industry). I got a contract to port a 50,000 statement vs/pascal VLSI
application to SUN (pascal ... in retrospect it would have been easier
to have rewitten it in "C"). SUN pascal appeared to have been limited to
educational uses *AND* support had been outsourced to an organization on
the opposite side of the planet (easy to walk into sun hdqtrs, but
didn't actually help a lot).
I'm not surprised. Pascal is not a bad language, but Sun's
Pascal compiler was a descendent of the UCB Pascal system done
on the PDP-11 (starting with a draft by Ken Thompson, who took
it to Berkeley during a sabbatical year in 1975 or '76) and
later ported to the VAX and then Sun workstations. That was
mainly intended for teaching; using it for production software
always felt kind of like an afterthought.
- Dan C
I would tend to think of Borland Turbo Pascal. Borland wrote good
compilers.
As I said, I have glanced at Free Pascal, and know of one excellent
package written in it. It seems like a solid and very powerful
system, but the industry has passed it by and moved on to other
things.
In article <87h5iizglt.fsf@localhost>, Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote: >>[snip]
Part of IBM restructure was unloading vlsi tools on industry tool vendor >>... and they required it run on SUN platforms (pervasive in the
industry). I got a contract to port a 50,000 statement vs/pascal VLSI >>application to SUN (pascal ... in retrospect it would have been easier
to have rewitten it in "C"). SUN pascal appeared to have been limited to >>educational uses *AND* support had been outsourced to an organization on >>the opposite side of the planet (easy to walk into sun hdqtrs, but
didn't actually help a lot).
I'm not surprised. Pascal is not a bad language, but Sun's
Pascal compiler was a descendent of the UCB Pascal system done
on the PDP-11 (starting with a draft by Ken Thompson, who took
it to Berkeley during a sabbatical year in 1975 or '76) and
later ported to the VAX and then Sun workstations. That was
mainly intended for teaching; using it for production software
always felt kind of like an afterthought.
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production systems
software, given the access to the starlet interface library.
On Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:35:40 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production systems
software, given the access to the starlet interface library.
There was a complete mail system written in it, although the name
escales me.
On Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:35:40 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production systems
software, given the access to the starlet interface library.
There was a complete mail system written in it, although the name escales >me.
Bob Eager <throwaway0008@eager.cx> writes:
On Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:35:40 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production systems
software, given the access to the starlet interface library.
There was a complete mail system written in it, although the name
escales me.
I wrote a print symbiont in VAX Pascal, as well as usage accounting
utilities and a few other tools.
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:
In article <87h5iizglt.fsf@localhost>, Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote: >>>[snip]
Part of IBM restructure was unloading vlsi tools on industry tool vendor >>>... and they required it run on SUN platforms (pervasive in the >>>industry). I got a contract to port a 50,000 statement vs/pascal VLSI >>>application to SUN (pascal ... in retrospect it would have been easier
to have rewitten it in "C"). SUN pascal appeared to have been limited to >>>educational uses *AND* support had been outsourced to an organization on >>>the opposite side of the planet (easy to walk into sun hdqtrs, but
didn't actually help a lot).
I'm not surprised. Pascal is not a bad language, but Sun's
Pascal compiler was a descendent of the UCB Pascal system done
on the PDP-11 (starting with a draft by Ken Thompson, who took
it to Berkeley during a sabbatical year in 1975 or '76) and
later ported to the VAX and then Sun workstations. That was
mainly intended for teaching; using it for production software
always felt kind of like an afterthought.
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production
systems software, given the access to the starlet
interface library.
On Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:02:47 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
Bob Eager <throwaway0008@eager.cx> writes:
On Mon, 19 Oct 2026 14:35:40 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
The VAX Pascal was certainly good enough for production systems
software, given the access to the starlet interface library.
There was a complete mail system written in it, although the name
escales me.
I wrote a print symbiont in VAX Pascal, as well as usage accounting
utilities and a few other tools.
I wrote everything in Macro-32 or BCPL.
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