What is Pascal ?

Pascal is a Structured, High-Level Computer Programming Language.
"What the hell is that ?" you probably ask yourself (good !)

Let's analyze the sentence above -

"Pascal" is named after 'Blaise Pascal', a French mathematician who invented the first mechanical calculation machine
at 1642 at the age of 19, in order to help his father in his work. It was called 'Pascaline'.

"Computer" (hope you know that one) is a general name for a machine which is able to perform a series of
instructions; The PC (Personal Computer) is the most common type of computer; Typical instructions are transferring of data
between different components, performing calculations etc (The main processor usually performs that kind of stuff).

"Programming Language" means a language like Arabic,English,French,German,Hebrew but meant to
'talk' with the computer; Some known computer programming languages are C, Pascal, Assembly, Java, Basic etc.
This is needed since the Computer mentioned above knows nothing about the human language.
Thus, an interface is needed in order to commit the willings of the programmer-user via the machine.

"Structured" means the language's syntax is divided into different structures such as Begin..End, Repeat..Until
The structures are meant to help the programmer implement the logic he plans, in a way that is more
related to his (English) verbal language.

"High-Level" means that the programmer doesn't have to handle all the craziness of the CPU (Central Processing Unit)
or OS (Operation System) - He talks 'High' ...
A language is told to be 'higher' than other one if the dependence between it to the OS is lower.
As higher the language it's more likely to be portable to different platforms.

At second thought ... this awful introduction just cannot explain anything relevant regarding the 'Pascal' programming
language, nor does it reflect my ideas of the language.
Here is someone who did it better : Learn Pascal, The Ultimate Pascal Tutorial , by Tau Yue.

After this short introduction, you can go to the Links in order to learn more about Pascal
or go back to my Programming Main Page.