alt Hacker NewsI think the legend goes Wirth created the Pascal language to be the most easily compilable. To show my age, I recall a class used Modula-2 when I was in college, also from Wirth, very Pascal-like.
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Nowadays you can enjoy it on GCC, as it is now an officially supported frontend, after GNU Modula-2 got merged into it.
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-15.2.0/gm2
Even available on compiler explorer to play with, https://godbolt.org/z/ev9Pbxn9K
Yes, that was a common trend across all programming languages designed by him.
That is also how P-Code came to be, he didn't want to create a VM for Pascal, rather the goal was to make porting easier, by requiring only a basic P-Code interpreter, it was very easy to port Pascal, a design approach he kept for Modula-2 (M-Code) and Oberon (Slim binaries).
> most easily compilable
I think it was more that it would be easy to write a compiler for, which meant that CS students could write one. Don't have a source for this that I can remember, though.
I seem to remember (but I can't find the source) that Wirth initially had three aims in designing Pascal:
1. To use it in teaching a structure programming course to new students. As in the late 60's all student programming was batch mode (submit your program to an operator to run, and pick up the printout the following day), this meant the compiler had to be single-pass and give good error messages.
2. To use it in teaching a data structures course involving new data structures worked out by Wirth and Hoare.
3. To use it in teaching a compilers course. This meant the compiler code had to be clean and understandable. Being single-pass helped in this.