The Modula programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 is a descendent of the Pascal programming language

Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...

. It was developed in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 in the late 1970s by Niklaus Wirth

Niklaus Wirth

Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth...

, the same person who designed Pascal. The main innovation of Modula over Pascal is a module system

Modularity (programming)

Modular programming is a software design technique that increases the extent to which software is composed of separate, interchangeable components called modules by breaking down program functions into modules, each of which accomplishes one function and contains everything necessary to accomplish...

, used for grouping sets of related declarations into program units; hence the name Modula.

Modula was never released, and its development was discontinued after its publication; Wirth then concentrated his efforts on Modula's successors: Modula-2

Modula-2

Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith...

, Oberon

Oberon (programming language)

Oberon is a programming language created in 1986 by Professor Niklaus Wirth and his associates at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. It was developed as part of the implementation of the Oberon operating system...

, Modula-2+

Modula-2+

Modula-2+ is a programming language descended from the Modula-2 language. It was developed at DEC Systems Research Center and Acorn Computers Ltd Research Centre in Palo Alto, California. Modula-2+ is Modula-2 with exceptions and threads. The group who developed the language was led by P...

 and Modula-3

Modula-3

In computer science, Modula-3 is a programming language conceived as a successor to an upgraded version of Modula-2 known as Modula-2+. While it has been influential in research circles it has not been adopted widely in industry...

. Although Wirth never released Modula, a compiler from the University of York

University of York

The University of York , is an academic institution located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the campus university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, covering a wide range of subjects...

, UK, was released.