Pascal is one of the reference programming languages in computer science, the one who defined the computer programming. Pascal was developed by Niklaus Wirth in 1970 Swiss to implement structured programming, which is easier to compile. One of its major advantages is the image of the natural language English, making it an ideal language for those who are the first contact with programming. Pascal is based on Algol language and was named in honor of the mathematician Blaise Pascal, credited for building the first digital computing machine. Wirth also developed Modula-2 and Oberon languages similar to Pascal.
The most popular implementations of this language was Turbo Pascal and Borland Pascal, Borland company with both Macintosh and DOS versions, which have added language objects and were continued with versions for visual programming for Microsoft Windows (used for environment Delphi) and Linux (Kylix).
Currently there are other implementations more or less popular, but free, including the Free Pascal and GNU Pascal noted.
Although it is now relatively rarely used in the software industry, it is still useful to students and students wishing to enter the program. Unlike BASIC, which was previously based on learning programming, Pascal is a structured language. Therefore, it forms a kind of thinking, similar to modern languages such as C + +, but lacks the complexity and abstraction of the latter is easier to understand because of simple syntax and pseudo close.