Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by thePunisher 2214 days ago
Pascal was originally an application programming language, not a systems programming language.

These days you can probably mix assembly within your Pascal code or access pointers directly with some custom language extensions, but these weren't part of the original Pascal specification.
1 comments
monocasa 2214 days ago
You've absolutely always been able to interop with asm as well as access and set arbitrary pointers with Pascal.

I'm not sure where you got this idea that Pascal is memory safe.

link
thePunisher 2213 days ago
Like I said, those were extensions made by compiler vendors, and not part of the original language.

Borland enabled adding Assembler to almost every language for which they made a compiler.

link
monocasa 2213 days ago
You know that UCSD Pascal or ISO Pascal isn't the original Pascal, right?
link
thePunisher 2213 days ago
The only takeaway for me is that most developers these days don't understand the difference between systems programming languages and general purpose application languages either.

We need an AOT compiled general purpose application language like C# with managed memory access. If people want to fool around with low-level stuff let them use Rust, assembler or C/C++.

link
monocasa 2213 days ago
Original Pascal was designed for bare metal systems programming on a CDC6000 series. Don't get snickety just because other people aren't abiding by your ahistorical definitions.
link