Didn't make what? C is the language in which more production software is being
written currently than any other language, but very many other languages are in
constant use worldwide in production as well as academic settings. These
languages include C++, LISP, FORTH, Visual Basic, Prolog, Perl, FORTRAN,
COBOL, Icon and, yes, Pascal. There is no language that serves all purposes
equally well.
If the purpose is to teach the fundamental principles behind algorithmic
programming, then I don't know of any language that is better suited than
Pascal. It incorporates all the foundational principles you need to
learn for algorithmic programming without encumbering the student with
unnecessarily tedious syntax and unnecessarily opaque semantics.
If the purpose is to show students what life is really like as a programmer,
then you could do us here in the industry a great service by not bothering
too much with teaching them _coding_ in a programming language, but teaching
them what skills must be mastered and what difficulties must be expected in
the areas of technical communication, requirements analysis, work breakdown
and scheduling, team collaboration, stress management, personality typing,
risk assessment, and sugar product supply logistics.
Anybody who doesn't care to buy into these areas should not look for gainful
employment in the software industry. Any such people you can scare off in K-12
would result in a great service to the industry and to society.
The amount of "grunt programming" necessary to get a piece of software to
market has decreased steadily throughout the history of the industry, and
continues to decrease today. Coding is a cute skill, like fly-fishing, and we
still need some coders here and there. I think the industry and the society
it is embedded in would be better served, though, if emphasis in K-12
education were placed on the process of software development as a
whole, rather than on "programming", with the latter subject just
dealing with the foundations of algorithmic programming using
a language like Pascal.
-- Mark
(Mark P. Line -- Bellevue, Washington -- mline@ix.netcom.com)