Languages

Pascal

Procedural Language

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "Pascal." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/pascal.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). Pascal. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/pascal

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-pascal,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {Pascal},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/pascal},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Pascal is an imperative and procedural programming language designed by Niklaus Wirth to encourage structured programming and sound data structuring practices, built on the pattern of ALGOL 60. It was widely adopted in education and commercial software through the 1970s and 1980s before being displaced by C and C++ in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Facts

First Released

1970 1

Paradigm

Imperative, procedural and structured. 1

Significance

Became a standard introductory teaching language in university computer science courses through the 1980s and saw commercial use, including in early Adobe Photoshop and parts of the classic Macintosh operating system, before C and C++ displaced it. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationLead paragraph

Quote, Lead paragraph

Pascal is an imperative and procedural programming language, designed by Niklaus Wirth as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming.

View the Source

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationInfoboxView the Source

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, first appeared dateView the Source

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationLegacy sectionView the Source

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationIn Field: Programming Language TheoryView the Source

1. Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)

Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced By: ALGOL, Lead paragraph, on ALGOL 60 patternView the Source

Wikipedia: Ada (programming language)