Pascal

Named after French mathematician Blaise Pascal, Pascal is both the name of a physical measurement unit (the SI unit) for pressure and a programming language.

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Actually, Pascal began as a hybrid language, aimed at being machine independent by having a common syntax interpreted into machine-dependent pseudocode which could then be executed by the final machine. As hardware became standardized on the IBM-Intel designs, the necessity for machine independence became less prominent. Although there are still Pascal interpreters available, there are compilers as well for many machines. These compilers frequently use today's large memories to accomplish both the first and second stage of processing.

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In the PC community, an early inexpensive Pascal compiler was distributed by the Borland software company. This earned Pascal many hobbyist users during the 1980's.