Many of the decisions for Pascal seem aimed for a teaching language as opposed to a production language.
Because it was. The fact it could be extended in so many ways to be a production language shows it had 'good bones', but many practical issues, like I/O, were left as an 'excercise to for the student'.
There seems to have been a lot of revisionist history around Wirths passing with people using Pascals limitations as an indictment of his PLT creds, virtually all of which ignore he was an academic working in academic environment on topics that interested him at the virtual beginning of programming on very, very limited machines. It's like calling Watt a hack because he didn't also add a supercharger and emissions control to the steam engine.
Because it was. The fact it could be extended in so many ways to be a production language shows it had 'good bones', but many practical issues, like I/O, were left as an 'excercise to for the student'.
There seems to have been a lot of revisionist history around Wirths passing with people using Pascals limitations as an indictment of his PLT creds, virtually all of which ignore he was an academic working in academic environment on topics that interested him at the virtual beginning of programming on very, very limited machines. It's like calling Watt a hack because he didn't also add a supercharger and emissions control to the steam engine.