Re: Pascal vs. linkers, was The History of the ALGOL Effort

Henry Spencer wrote:


> This experience had wider ramifications, too: PL360 compiled so much
> faster than IBM's glacially-slow linker could link, that it soured Wirth
> on separate compilation. The result was several influential languages,
> most notably Pascal, with no provision for separate compilation.


This is an interesting point and there is probably some truth in
it. But in 1980, Wirth already implemented Modula 2, which had a much
cleaner concept for separate compilation and for the interfaces
between compilation units. You may argue, of course, that by 1980 it
was too late and C had already won the race. Anyway, I remember that
the decision in favour of C was made much slower. During the whole
1980s, our professors at University made their disregard for C public
("C is only a portable assembler"). Modula 2 was the language of the
1980s (at least here in Europe).


It was the lack of a standard library that really killed Wirth's
languages. And Wirth's refusal to take part in the ADA development
took away his last chance to influence the development. It was around
1990 that I felt C had won. The one single reason that I saw (at that
time) was Microsoft choosing C and not Pascal as the language they
used to re-write MS-DOS 3.x (which was implemented in 8086 assembler
until then).

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