Re: why the pascal family of languages (Pascal, Ada, Modula-2,2,Oberon, Delphi, Algol,...) failed compared to the C family?

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 2021-06-02 16:04, John Perry wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 6:04:49 PM UTC-5, Bill Findlay wrote:
>> On 1 Jun 2021, Paul Rubin wrote
>> (in article <877djdf...@nightsong.com>):
>>> Bill Findlay<findl...@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:
>>>>>> The 20KSLOC compiler ran on a 1.5MIPS machine.
>>>>> Yes, but 1) 20KSLOC per what unit of time,
>>>
>>> Ok, but that's maybe 5x slower than Turbo Pascal, which compiled 1000s
>>> of LOC per second on machines of that class.
>> Well that is not what emerged in the conversation I reported.
>> The details are vague now, the gist was that the 1977 compiler
>> on comparable machines was several times faster that Turbo.
> 
> May I ask what is meant by "comparable machines"?

Around the end of 80's we used the dhrystone benchmark to compare machines.

> Here's why I ask: it can't have been a machine based on the Intel 8088, because that wasn't available until 1979. An elderly embedded engineer I know says that the CPU used in the PC series, at least the early PC's (8088 & 286) was a terrible CPU. He likes to joke how his <1MHz 6809-based "Trash 80 Color Computer" at $500 could run circles around the >4MHz 8088-based IBM at $1500.

That is my recollection too. I remember that an elderly 1MHz PDP-11 
outperformed 12MHz 286. But the instruction set of PDP-11 was eons ahead 
of the 286's mess.

> So I'm curious if you know the basis of the claim that it was comparable hardware: clock speed, RAM, etc.

It is simply so that C compilers were garbage that time. C is a 
difficult language to compile comparing to Turbo Pascal, especially 
using the methods that were popular then.

The only decent C compiler I remember from that time was DEC VAX C.

Even advanced machines like Motorola 68k, HP had horrific C compilers. 
[Sun's SPARC C was somewhat better] The first thing to do was to 
bootstrap an early GCC on these machines, because the standard compilers 
were insufferable. I carried the sources with on a tape (maybe even on a 
reel, I do not remember). That was fun.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de