[pjmlp]

In what concerns fast compilation times, and type safe linkage, there were other languages doing it before Pascal.

The language extensions for units/modules in Pascal are influenced by other languages from the 1960's and 1970's. ESPOL/NEWP, PL/I dialects, ALGOL dialects, Mesa, Modula-2.

Linker technology that the C authors decided to ignore,

"Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own."

-- https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html

[RealiZM]

I used Borland's Pascal. And I know this: it had insane compile/build time, even with TurboVision or OWL libraries for UI. Borland's C++ compiler of same age weren't even close. And despite all language extensions, Pascal was quick to parse and to generate not great, but okay code. Over 20 years later, GCC without -O1 generates countless coping for very simple C code. Not to mention all brainpower and money behind C and C++ versus behind Pascal. This quote proves that computer industry often goes after the worst option and is very fond of reinventing wheel.

[kragen]

countless copies?

[RealiZM]

Yes, instead copying from memory to memory using registers it was something like memory-registers-stack-registers-memory. Is not some ancient GCC from early 1990s, it was around 2010 or so.

[kragen]

yeah, i've had that experience too, which is why i guessed you meant to say 'countless copies'