Not a surprise to anyone familiar with pascal's grammer.
I ended up learning Delphi mostly by happenstance--I ended up getting gifted a free copy of Delphi 3, whereas VisualBasic and Visual C++ were comparatively expensive at the time--but I am incredibly, incredibly glad that I learned that first. Where C++'s grammar is convoluted, confusing, and contradictory, Turbo Pascal's and Delphi's manage to be very simple and straightforward with comparable power. I spent a lot less time coming to terms with syntax, and a lot more time familiarizing myself with machine code, calling conventions, and libraries.
Having a straightforward grammar doesn't just help the compiler use less space. It helps your brain use less space on raw syntax.
Java may kinda look like C++, but Java 1.1 acted a lot like Borland Pascal plus a UCSD pcode-system. Nested blocks, strong typing, easy string manipulation, portable interpreter. And support for strings over 255 chars long, too! :-)
Edit; not meant sarcastic, I would really like to see such a simple parser as was implied.
Nor, frankly, is K&R C, which is is also a very simple representation. The ANSI process added some edge cases that complicated it, but really it's pretty simple.
The problem is not with Lisp syntax. The problem is with Lisp's semantics, which makes it much more difficult (if at all possible) to compile in one pass. Things like closures, conditions or macros are absent in Pascal.
Turbo Pascal's code generation was simple and naive. It had little optimization. It literally output the machine code as it parsed. There was no AST, not even an expression tree.
(I have the source code to the final version of the Turbo Pascal compiler on my disk. It was used for Delphi 1.)
Is that still under copyright? And chance it could be released?
I have no idea about releasing it. I'm entirely the wrong end of the company to ask about it.