> Both compilation and execution speed are really fast, so you have both quick edit-compile-test turnarounds similar to a scripting language while having the execution speed of native code.
It always makes me smile when C and C++ young developers re-discover the compilation times we old timers already enjoyed with Modula-2 and Extended Pascal compilers in the mid-80's.
I learned programming with Turbo Pascal, so I knew before that compilers could be fast and produce efficient code. ;-) If only innovation in Pascal hadn't stopped, we might be using it more than we currently do.
The industry just decided to look into another direction and now with buffer exploits everywhere, it is rediscovering that you can have strong typing with compilers that produce native code.
Now were we talking about Pascal or everything that vaguely looks like a Wirth language? Delphi, alright, Ada, okay, but the others? Meh. None of them had anything fundamentally innovative or were just too obscure from the beginning.
> Now were we talking about Pascal or everything that vaguely looks like a Wirth language? Delphi, alright, Ada, okay, but the others?
I explicitly mentioned Modula-2 on my previous post and most languages on the list are actually done by Wirth or with his input.
> None of them had anything fundamentally innovative or were just too obscure from the beginning.
Well, I consider systems programming languages with GC pretty innovative, given the way Native Oberon and Bluebottle were used in Zurich's Technical University. Even if the languages are pretty basic when compared with Ada or Delphi.
"...its successors Modula and Oberon are much more mature and refined designs than Pascal. They form a family, and each descendant profited from experiences with its ancestors." Niklaus Wirth
Modula and Oberon do not vaguely look like Wirth lanugages, they are Wirth languages. And unlike Pascal, which was designed mainly for educational purposes, Modula and Oberon were designed for real world usage.
z/OS is coded in a mix of Modula-2, PL/I and Assembly. Newer parts of the system are nowadays written in C++.
The problem with any systems programming language is that it needs to be forced into developers by an OS vendor, otherwise very few will use it as such.
It always makes me smile when C and C++ young developers re-discover the compilation times we old timers already enjoyed with Modula-2 and Extended Pascal compilers in the mid-80's.