Etydhv

In his 1993 conference proceeding The Development of the C Language, Dennis Ritchie stated

Successors

C and even B have several direct descendants, though they do not rival Pascal in generating progeny.

Was Ritchie correct, or was he just being modest? As of the date of the quote (1993), were more computer languages descended from Pascal than C?

We are counting languages, not their specific compilers/implementations (e.g. UCSD Pascal, Borland C). Some languages may be descended from both.

(I doubt such a claim would still be true today.)

Was Ritchie correct, or was he just being modest?

I’m not sure modesty plays a part here; I don’t see any statement of value attached to the size of a language’s family.

As of the date of the quote (1993), were more computer languages descended from Pascal than C?

Yes, he was correct; the main descendants of C by 1993 are listed in the paper:

• Concurrent C


• Objective C


• C*


• C++

Pascal had many more by 1993, including

• the Modula family of languages


• the Oberon family


• Concurrent Pascal


• Object Pascal


• Ada

As you mention yourself, later languages tried to integrate lessons learned from both C-related and Pascal-related languages, and they all derive from Algol anyway. (Pascal itself started off as suggested improvements to Algol X, which weren’t accepted into the language.)

The reason Pascal is at the root of a larger family tree hasn’t been evoked yet.

Pascal was designed by Niklaus Wirth, a researcher whose work focused on studying programming itself, including the use of programming languages as teaching tools and structuring tools (for structuring programmers’ minds); programming languages were nearly a side-effect of that research, and Wirth iterated on programming languages multiple times, which led to a profusion of languages and variants. Pascal was widely studied in academic circles, and others also pursued this type of research, leading to more descendants than Wirth himself could produce.

C on the other hand was designed by Dennis Ritchie, as a tool to develop Unix. It wasn’t a research vehicle, and thus didn’t immediately produce the wealth of variants and descendants that Pascal did. It initially spread with its users, not with papers describing it, at least until The C Programming Language was published (six years after the creation of C).

The programming languages genealogical tree project includes a nice diagram, and a large list of other resources on the topic.

At the time he wrote that, it would have been literally true.
Concurrent Pascal, *Pascal, SUE (which I'd like to know more
about), Modula (not Modula-2), Modula-2, Mesa, Modula-3,
Euclid, Concurrent Euclid, Turing, Turing+, the Gypsy
specification language, LIS (another one I'd like to know
more about), and arguably CLU. Those are just ones I can
call to mind.

Short Answer: Yes

Was Ritchie correct, or was he just being modest? As of the date of the quote (1993), were more computer languages descended from Pascal than C?

(*1)

Well, it's not as easy as it sounds, as there is no birth certificate with all parents named. Both languages are Algol descendants. And throughout the 1980s Pascal was seen as the way to go - eventually all the way 'til Ada. So yes.

We are counting languages, not their specific compilers/implementations (e.g. UCSD Pascal, Borland C).

Err. No. This falls short of development. To start with, Pascal in its core definition is a very simple language (much more simple than C) intended for teaching classes about basic programming all the way to compiler building. As a result, it was so simplified that serious work was almost impossible - an elegant language for ivory tower games. It lacked strings, usable file I/O and any form of modularisation.

To make it usable for real world application, implementation had to enhance it substantially. And as usual, each and every developer had it his way. A UCSD Pascal program could not be compiled with Pascal/MT+ or Microsoft or Turbo Pascal, as all of them handled things differently.

If at all, then there is a main line promoted by the two most successful products: UCSD Pascal and Turbo Pascal, with the later being an extension of some sort to UCSD Pascal. The huge success of TP did lead to many other moving toward compatible constructs.

Heck, and then there are languages called Pascal which are derived from already different named languages, like Component Pascal evolved out of Oberon, which itself is a much improved Pascal child.

Bottom line, the distinction when it is a 'new' language or not cannot be made by the name.

Turbo Pascal and its incredible wide spread success (even I was tempted to use it) makes a good maker about how much more successful Pascal was in the 80s than C.

Some languages may be descended from both.

There is no 'pure' linage anywhere in the language world. To some degree all Algol based languages can as well be described as Pascal offsprings.

It may even be necessary to look past the syntactic sugar of brackets vs. keywords to realize that Pascal is mainly data driven, as its big step from Algol was the way to define data structures. In so far Ada makes the most 'pure' child of Pascal anyway (*2). Nowadays a feature to be found across basically all general purpose languages.

But let's try a list of close relatives openly carrying the family tradition:

• Pascal


• UCSD Pascal


• Turbo Pascal


• Pascal-SC


• Oberon


• Modula-2


• Component-Pascal


• Delphi


• Concurrent Pascal


• Pascal XL


• Object Pascal


• Pocket Studio


• Vector Pascal (available for the PS2 !)


• MS Pascal


• Compaq Pascal (notable for type casting)

Besides all the variation two lines are notable. One is the Oberon/Modula development driven by Wirth, the other is the Borland Turbo/Delphi line. Each creating their own family of Pascal offspring sharing features. The later creating a linage looking like this:

• (Pascal)


• (UCSD Pascal)


• Turbo Pascal


• Borland Pascal


• Object Pascal


• Delphi

Well, and then there are all the languages with a less clear lineage all the way to JavaScript and Ada.

(I doubt such a claim would still be true today.)

As before, it depends on the way of counting. I'd say Pascal has still an advantage here :))

*1 - It may be noteworthy that Brian Kernighan in contrast offered quite some public (and less than correct) criticism about Pascal.

*2 - All the incompatible Pascal variations where the main reasons for the demand that Ada compilers could only be called that way if they adhere to a strict standard ... which eventually delayed Ada compilers way too long to really inherit the Pascal world, making room for C.