I never understood how C took over the desktop space as well. Pascal was a way better language and already dominant for home computing back in the 80s. Then by the 90s everywhere was C and C++.
I never quite understood how or why that happened.
>Pascal was a way better language and already dominant for home computing back in the 80s.
Not sure what you mean there ("dominant"?) but in the 1980s, BASIC was the dominant language on home computers because that's what they included. Commodore VIC-20 & 64, Atari 400/800, Texas Instruments TI-99 TI-BASIC, and IBM home computers like the PC jr had IBM-BASIC which was licensed from Microsoft's GW-BASIC.
Something like Turbo Pascal was only purchased by a minority of 1980s computer users. That's why 1980s home computer enthusiast magazines like Compute! published their code lists in BASIC: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22compute!%22+magazine+code...
>I never understood how C took over the desktop space as well.
I'm guessing it's because C Language was already popular on the commercial side because of UNIX implementations which spread into microcomputers. Microsoft dabbled in XENIX which was AT&T UNIX. In the 1980s when popular desktop programs such as DOS, Lotus-123, and WordPerfect migrated from pure assembly to <high_level_language> ... they all ended up choosing C instead of Pascal. Why did industry converge on C? Maybe because there were more C compilers for various platforms. (The portability and cross-platform angle.)
> Not sure what you mean there ("dominant"?) but in the 1980s, BASIC was the dominant language on home computers because that's what they included.
That was late 70s / early 80s and the firmware was all assembly with most software being written in machine code because the speed of those BASIc interpreters left a lot to be desired.
I’m talking later in the decade when operating systems became the norm. Early versions of Windows and Mac OS were written in Pascal.
>Early versions of Windows and Mac OS were written in Pascal.
Windows 1.0 in 1985 was written in C Language and assembly. The x86 alternative os to MS-DOS such as Digital Research GEM was also written in C and assembly.
> The x86 alternative os to MS-DOS such as Digital Research GEM was also written in C and assembly.
Minor nitpick from what you’ve posted above (I’m sure you know this and perhaps had a brain fart when you posted):
GEM was DRs GUI so an alternative to Windows. Their DOS equivalent (in fact the predecessor to DOS technically speaking) was CP/M.
I do take your larger point though and thank you for the links. It was very informative. However that example aside, it’s still worth noting that Pascal was a popular language that fell out of favour in the 90s as C its derivatives swept through the industry. Now it seems uncool to have ALGOL-like syntax with languages either opting for C-braces or being whitespace driven like Python. And I see that as a loss in terms of readability.
I’m probably just sound old now though — moaning about “the good old days” lol
Not in what concerned 16 bit platforms, at least in Europe.
Turbo Pascal, and compilers for Basic dialects were everywhere.
On Amiga, most stuff was being done in Assembly, Modula-2, AMOS, and yes if you bought the Commodore SDK, there was a C compiler.
Mac OS was written in Object Pascal, and eventually moved into C++ with MPW and Symantec PowerPlant around 1992.
On OS/2 we had Smalltalk and C++ with CSet++, on Windows Delphi (TPW still managed an appearance on Windows 3.1), VB, C++ with OWL, VCL, MFC.
Even if the kernel for Windows and OS/2 was written in C, the upper layer was all about C++ with those SDKs, which meant using proper strings, vectors and collection classes with bounds checking was already quite an improvement anyway.
C and UNIX only took new wind into their sails thanks to the GNU Manifesto that all FOSS software should be written in C.
I’m sure Pascal was much more widespread than your post suggests though. I’m sure I read somewhere that early Windows (as well as Lisa) was written in Pascal. And I do remember Pascal compilers for the Atari ST too. I’d be amazed if there wasn’t one for the Amiga.
But even just going back to DOS, Turbo Pascal was a real game changer for me.
I never quite understood how or why that happened.