On the Design of Programming Languages (1974) [pdf] (web.cs.ucdavis.edu)

44 points by jruohonen 3 days ago

4 comments:

by palad1n an hour ago

I think the legend goes Wirth created the Pascal language to be the most easily compilable. To show my age, I recall a class used Modula-2 when I was in college, also from Wirth, very Pascal-like.

by pjmlp 17 minutes ago

Nowadays you can enjoy it on GCC, as it is now an officially supported frontend, after GNU Modula-2 got merged into it.

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-15.2.0/gm2

Even available on compiler explorer to play with, https://godbolt.org/z/ev9Pbxn9K

Yes, that was a common trend across all programming languages designed by him.

That is also how P-Code came to be, he didn't want to create a VM for Pascal, rather the goal was to make porting easier, by requiring only a basic P-Code interpreter, it was very easy to port Pascal, a design approach he kept for Modula-2 (M-Code) and Oberon (Slim binaries).

by zabzonk an hour ago

> most easily compilable

I think it was more that it would be easy to write a compiler for, which meant that CS students could write one. Don't have a source for this that I can remember, though.

by medi8r 7 minutes ago

Looks like AI slop to me :)

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