
UCSD Pascal pioneer Ken Bowles has died - everybodyknows
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/science/sd-me-kenbowles-obit-20180909-story.html
======
WalterBright
UCSD Pascal was the first "Java" in that Pascal was compiled to machine-
independent P-Code that was then interpreted. (I used it in the 1980s.) The
main problem it had was it was slow. In the 90's, even with the CPU advances,
interpreted Java was still too slow. It took Symantec's Java JIT compiler to
really make Java work.

I.e. what UCSD-Pascal lacked was a JIT compiler. Even a simple one would have
made a huge difference.

UCSD-Pascal was the right idea, it was just before its time. I think Java owes
a lot to Ken Bowles.

~~~
everybodyknows
By '80 or so it was possible to link to assembler, and the recipe was to code
inner loops in assembler. With a Digital Equipment LSI-11 CPU and its simple,
highly regular machine code, this was workable for a time.

~~~
protomyth
LSI-11 [http://www.cpushack.com/2017/11/22/cpu-of-the-day-dec-
lsi-11...](http://www.cpushack.com/2017/11/22/cpu-of-the-day-dec-
lsi-11-chipset/)

------
jonjacky
The UCSD P-system OS (from the 1970s) always had a single line menu bar across
the top of the screen, whose entries might change when different applications
ran. I have always suspected that was the inspiration for the Macintosh menu
bar.

This slide deck has a brief history of UCSD Pascal and the P-system OS, with
quite a few technical details:

[http://pascal.hansotten.com/uploads/ucsd/reunion/Richard%20K...](http://pascal.hansotten.com/uploads/ucsd/reunion/Richard%20Kaufmann%20-%20What%20The%20Heck%20Was%20UCSD%20Pascal.pdf)

~~~
jdswain
Bill Atkinson ported UCSD Pascal to the Apple ][, and he was one of the very
core Mac developers. Apple Pascal was probably one of the very few software
systems that spanned all of Apple's computers at the time. The Apple /// made
heavy use of it and had the benefit of a lot more RAM. Then the Lisa Monitor
used the same menus as earlier Apple Pascals. I think the Lisa Pascal was
licensed from another company and wasn't a port of UCSD Pascal though. One of
the first pieces of code for the Mac was a port of the Lisa Monitor, so those
Pascal menus were probably the first menu bar on the Macintosh. The Macintosh
Toolbox, while written mostly in assembly language had Pascal bindings and
much of it was originally written in Pascal before being rewritten in
assembly, QuickDraw was based on LisaGraf which was written in Pascal.

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Joining_Apple_Computer&showcomments=1)

------
sehugg
I remember on my Apple ][ playing Wizardry, written in UCSD Pascal:
[https://www.filfre.net/2012/03/making-
wizardry/](https://www.filfre.net/2012/03/making-wizardry/)

Pretty sure there were a few text adventures written with it too. The non-
flashing cursor and glacially slow text output is a sure tell:
[https://archive.org/details/RamboFirstBloodPartII4amCrack](https://archive.org/details/RamboFirstBloodPartII4amCrack)

(edit: another article from the same source about the P-Machine and Bowles:
[https://www.filfre.net/2012/03/pascal-and-the-p-
machine/](https://www.filfre.net/2012/03/pascal-and-the-p-machine/))

------
open-source-ux
Ken Bowles authored the book _Beginner 's guide for the UCSD Pascal System_ in
1980. Here is a complete scan of the book on archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/Beginners_Guide_for_the_UCSD_Pas...](https://archive.org/details/Beginners_Guide_for_the_UCSD_Pascal_System_1980/page/n0)

------
mark_l_watson
Ken was a great guy. We both lived and worked in San Diego so I would
occasionally see him. The last time was around 1980. I had been using UCSD
Pascal to write my Go playing program for the Apple II, and ran into him at a
party. He and his wife were just heading to the South Seas to go SCUBA diving
(a favorite hobby of his). His work positively affected many people. RIP

------
cmcguinness
I used UCSD Pascal quite a bit during my undergraduate days; my school (UC
Irvine) had bought a bunch of (I think) Terak boxes for the computing center.
I ended up getting the UCSD-Pascal card for my personal Apple ][+, hooked it
up to a 24x80 CRT (because programmers always need large displays), and that
allowed me to do my homework ... at home (I know, amazing)! I owe a debt of
gratitude to Mr. Bowles for being such a good evangelist.

------
zoom6628
I first programmed pascal on Osborne-1 when studying at AUT(then ATI) in
AUckland, New Zealand in 1982. Great language that recently have looked to
again in its fpc variant for its write-once run-anywhere - seems the folks
looking after freepascal keeping the Ken Bowles spirit alive!

Big thanks to Ken Bowles for the impact on all of us who code.

------
TickleSteve
RIP Ken Bowles,

Unfortunately, this only highlights the continued lack of ability for some US
publications to get their act together regarding Europe.

~~~
kristianp
What's it got to do with Europe?

~~~
dirkt
The submitted link can't be accessed from Europe: "Unfortunately, our website
is currently unavailable in most European countries."

------
Animats
I met him once, in the 1980s. At the time he was talking about implementing
Ada on something like the P-System.

~~~
pjmlp
Rational Software started as a company selling Ada Machines, they then pivoted
to other industries.

