The Modula
programming language is a descendant of the
Pascal language. It was developed in
Switzerland, at
ETH Zurich, in the mid-1970s by
Niklaus Wirth, the same person who designed Pascal. The main innovation of Modula over Pascal is a
module system, used for grouping sets of related declarations into program units; hence the name ''Modula''. The language is defined in a report by Wirth called ''Modula. A language for modular multiprogramming'' published 1976.
Modula was first implemented by Wirth on a
PDP-11. Very soon, other implementations followed, most importantly, the
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...
s developed for
University of York Modula, and one at
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...
Laboratories named PL Modula, which generated code for the
LSI-11 microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...
.
The development of Modula was discontinued soon after its publication. Wirth then concentrated his efforts on Modula's successor,
Modula-2.
References
Procedural programming languages
Modula programming language family
Programming languages created in 1975
{{Prog-lang-stub