Modula is a Pascal-based programming language. Unlike Pascal, which was designed primarily as a teaching language, Modula was designed to be used for designing and running production systems. Modula can be considered a superset of the Pascal programming language.

Modula retained the strongest features of Pascal while adding a module system and hardware device interfaces. Modules allow a programmer to encapsulate subprograms and data. Interfaces to hardware devices are accomplished through low-level programming constructs within Modula.

Modula-1 was developed in the late 1970s by Dr. Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of Pascal. Modula-2, the most common implementation of the Modula language, was introduced in the early 1980s. Modula-2 was used as the system language for the Lilith workstation.

Modula-3 is an object-oriented derivative of Modula-2. It adds support for generics, objects, and garbage collection to the Modula-2 implementation. With Wirthüs blessing, Modula-3 was developed by a team at the Digital Systems Research Center and the Olivetti Research Center. Rather than extending Modula-2, the team designed and developed Modula-3 from the ground up, keeping the basic concepts of Modula-2. Modula-3 was published in 1988.