WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

pascal
    n 1: a unit of pressure equal to one newton per square meter
         [syn: pascal, Pa]
    2: French mathematician and philosopher and Jansenist; invented
       an adding machine; contributed (with Fermat) to the theory of
       probability (1623-1662) [syn: Pascal, Blaise Pascal]
    3: a programing language designed to teach programming through a
       top-down modular approach

The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

Pascal
 n.

    An Algol-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the CDC 6600
    around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for elementary programming. This
    language, designed primarily to keep students from shooting themselves in
    the foot and thus extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming
    point of view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in fact,
    became the ancestor of a large family of languages including Modula-2 and
    Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline language). The hackish point of view
    on Pascal was probably best summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan
    way, screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&R fame)
    entitled Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language, which was
    turned down by the technical journals but circulated widely via
    photocopies. It was eventually published in Comparing and Assessing
    Programming Languages, edited by Alan Feuer and Narain Gehani
    (Prentice-Hall, 1984). Part of his discussion is worth repeating here,
    because its criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself after many years
    of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many other
    bondage-and-discipline languages. (The entire essay is available at http://
    www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html.) At the end of a summary of the
    case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:

        9. There is no escape

        This last point is perhaps the most important. The language is
        inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its
        limitations. There are no casts to disable the type-checking when
        necessary. There is no way to replace the defective run-time
        environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler that
        defines the ?standard procedures?. The language is closed.

        People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal trap.
        Because the language is impotent, it must be extended. But each group
        extends Pascal in its own direction, to make it look like whatever
        language they really want. Extensions for separate compilation,
        FORTRAN-like COMMON, string data types, internal static variables,
        initialization, octal numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the
        utility of the language for one group but destroy its portability to
        others.

        I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much beyond its
        original target. In its pure form, Pascal is a toy language, suitable
        for teaching but not for real programming.

    Pascal has since been entirely displaced (mainly by C) from the niches it
    had acquired in serious applications and systems programming, and from its
    role as a teaching language by Java.


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Pascal

    (After the French mathematician Blaise Pascal
   (1623-1662)) A programming language designed by Niklaus
   Wirth around 1970.  Pascal was designed for simplicity and
   for teaching programming, in reaction to the complexity of
   ALGOL 68.  It emphasises structured programming
   constructs, data structures and strong typing. Innovations
   included enumeration types, subranges, sets, variant
   records, and the case statement.  Pascal has been extremely
   influential in programming language design and has a great
   number of variants and descendants.

   ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1993 is very similar to ISO Pascal but
   does not include conformant arrays.

   ISO 7185-1983(E).  Level 0 and Level 1.  Changes from Jensen &
   Wirth's Pascal include name equivalence; names must be bound
   before they are used; loop index must be local to the
   procedure; formal procedure parameters must include their
   arguments; conformant array schemas.

   An ALGOL-descended language designed by Niklaus Wirth on the
   CDC 6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for
   elementary programming.  This language, designed primarily to
   keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus
   extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point
   of view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in
   fact, became the ancestor of a large family of languages
   including Modula-2 and Ada (see also bondage-and-discipline
   language).  The hackish point of view on Pascal was probably
   best summed up by a devastating (and, in its deadpan way,
   screamingly funny) 1981 paper by Brian Kernighan (of K&R
   fame) entitled "Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Programming
   Language", which was turned down by the technical journals but
   circulated widely via photocopies.  It was eventually
   published in "Comparing and Assessing Programming Languages",
   edited by Alan Feuer and Narain Gehani (Prentice-Hall, 1984).
   Part of his discussion is worth repeating here, because its
   criticisms are still apposite to Pascal itself after ten years
   of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many
   other bondage-and-discipline languages.  At the end of a
   summary of the case against Pascal, Kernighan wrote:

   9. There is no escape

   This last point is perhaps the most important.  The language
   is inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to
   escape its limitations.  There are no casts to disable the
   type-checking when necessary.  There is no way to replace the
   defective run-time environment with a sensible one, unless one
   controls the compiler that defines the "standard procedures".
   The language is closed.

   People who use Pascal for serious programming fall into a
   fatal trap.  Because the language is impotent, it must be
   extended.  But each group extends Pascal in its own direction,
   to make it look like whatever language they really want.
   Extensions for separate compilation, Fortran-like COMMON,
   string data types, internal static variables, initialisation,
   octal numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the utility
   of the language for one group but destroy its portability to
   others.

   I feel that it is a mistake to use Pascal for anything much
   beyond its original target.  In its pure form, Pascal is a toy
   language, suitable for teaching but not for real programming.

   Pascal has since been almost entirely displaced (by C) from
   the niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems
   programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist
   language in the MS-DOS and Macintosh worlds.

   See also Kamin's interpreters, p2c.

   ["The Programming Language Pascal", N. Wirth, Acta Informatica
   1:35-63, 1971].

   ["PASCAL User Manual and Report", K. Jensen & N. Wirth,
   Springer 1975] made significant revisions to the language.

   [BS 6192, "Specification for Computer Programming Language
   Pascal", British Standards Institute 1982].

   [Jargon File]

   (1996-06-12)