Talk:UCSD Pascal

This article, and the article UCSD p-system Overlap each other more than just mildly. --Samiam95124 01:14, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Correct wikilink is UCSD p-System. Msnicki (talk) 01:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I have put this in the "Pascal Dialects" catagory, which means that you can find it there with other pascals.--Samiam95124 29 June 2005 02:50 (UTC)

ada <-> pascal
The introduction says: Notable extensions to standard Pascal include separately compilable Units and a String type. Both of these extensions influenced the design of the Ada programming language.

The history section says: UCSD introduced two features that were important improvements on the original Pascal: variable length strings, and "units" of independently compiled code (an idea taken from the then-evolving Ada programming language).

So which one comes first after all? Svofski (talk) 16:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

They both are, to a certain extent. Ada was developed by a number of competing (but not isolated) teams. The UCSD Pascal group had a contract to work with one of the teams, and had a workshop at UCSD where units were discussed. Probably the best summary is that UCSD's work influenced the Ada design, but that the UCSD team was also able to benefit from the ideas being developed in the nascent Ada community.

Wirth was already working on modular programming concepts in the late seventies (Lilith!). I think it is more logical that the UCSD unit concept was based on Modula2 and the ISO Pascal standarization effort.

In 30 years of pascal I never saw a reference of Pascal borrowing from the Ada in the early days, and this article is not providing one etiher, so I assume this is revisionism.

However nowadays e.g. Free Pascal does look at ADA to see how general concepts can be done in Wirthian style. Comparisons are often made on the maillists. 88.159.64.210 (talk) 17:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Incorrectly Redirected here
The main article has been made the object of redirection for people seeking information on P-Code. P-Code is also known as "pseudo-code" and does not necessarily mean Pascal Code. People have been writing pseudo-code, ever since they figured out ways of representing (and interpreting) bytes and words with things that don't actually mean anything in any given programming language.

Somebody should fix the redirect so that people trying to look up "Pseudo-Code" (a way of implementing theoretical or "virtual" microprocessors) won't be redirected to this page. 216.99.219.27 (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

p-code is not a short for "pseudo code". The term you are looking for is bytecode, not pseudo-code and p-code was one of the earliest examples of that. Pseudo code is something totally different in the algorithmic notational department. 88.159.64.210 (talk) 17:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

"System"

 * UCSD Pascal was a Pascal programming language system

What constitutes this system? Just the OS and the programming language, or additionally a complete toolchain? --Abdull (talk) 10:57, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Toolchain more or less. So implementation of the language (compiler/interpreter/vm) + libraries. The division of toolchain into many programs is something a bit Unix-centric though. Most non-unix toolchains are at least partially integrated.

88.159.64.210 (talk) 17:34, 10 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Most pre-PC toolchains were either a REPL (like APL or Lisp) or multi-pass with separate programs like UNIX. Even on PCs early professional toolchains were multi-pass (eg, C80/L80 for Microsoft's C compiler on CP/M). -- Resuna (talk) 14:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Apple ][
When I bought an Apple ][ in 1980, I also bought the UCSD p-system. (I used its text editor until I bought a PC in the late 80s.) It came with Pascal, and you could purchase a version of FORTRAN, which Apple touted. I wrote an FFT in FORTRAN, but it was slow. I don't know how many p-systems Apple sold, but I'm reasonably certain it was a substantial number. The article should mention this. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 23:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

On the Apple II the compiler displayed a pattern of broken lines corresponding in some way to the structure of the program, gradually growing from the top of the screen, until the compilation was complete.

There was a somewhat famous cartoon at the time, captioned "Daddy's playing Pascal. That's where you try and see how many dots you can get before it beeps and you say nasty words."

Given how sparse the page is, perhaps there's some room for a mention? -- Resuna (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2021 (UTC)


 * When I was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982-84, we had a Corvus Constellation with several dozen Apple ][ on which we undergrads learned UCSD Pascal as our first programming language. Over a dozen newer languages later, I'm still grateful for the way UCSD naturally steered me into writing clean code from first attempt. Keep it simple, keep it easily legible to the next human who has to modify it, and the after-the-fact unit testers will rarely have anything to complain about.  My thanks to the creators of the system, and to whomever purchased it for UNC-CH. 204.116.50.98 (talk) 16:11, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Versions
Does anyone have the release date for each version? 108.202.33.17 (talk) 18:48, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a collection of release notes for software. --Wtshymanski (talk) 23:47, 21 February 2023 (UTC)