Kernighan's paper (from 1981) is extremely outdated and was prior to: Turbo Pascal (1983), ISO 1983 Pascal, Apple's Clascal (Object Pascal forerunner of 1983), Apple's Object Pascal (1986), ISO 1990 Pascal, Delphi (1995), or Free Pascal/Lazarus (1997) showing up.

It is bizarre or demonstrates a lack of knowledge to take a document from 40 years ago, and then pretend nothing changed. People wouldn't do that with C or C++, so why do it to Pascal/Object Pascal?

Take a look at the below link, Which addresses most points outlined in the paper, in terms of modern dialects of Pascal.

https://wiki.freepascal.org/Why_Pascal_is_Not_My_Favorite_Pr...

Something else to be said about Kernighan and that "hit piece" paper, was that AT&T Bell Laboratories was behind it. People should realize that AT&T was pushing C and then C++, so were very much trying to take down Pascal. This is a document that was "weaponized" to be used against competition, and very oddly, is still being used as such.