On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 04:52:10PM +0200, Didier Kryn wrote: > Le 25/07/2015 20:55, Hendrik Boom a écrit : > >... > >>>This really > >>>violates the standing principle of "paying for only what you use." > >I encountered this principle long ago when I got involved in the > >design and implementation of Algol 68 -- they deliberately violated it > >with one feature -- they decided that everyone would pay the price of > >a procedure calling mechanism that supported recursion. > > > >Sometimes it is the right thing to do. The same decision was made by > >practically eveery language designed afterward. > > > >Not to say they didn't accidentally violate it a few times, of course. > >I'm talking five decades ago, back when people were inventing the > >language design principles we now take for granted. > > So you were involved in the design of Algol68! This was the > first language I learned, in 1972-1973. The second of a great > lineage which comprises Pascal and Ada. Kudos Hendrik! That's a > pretty long carreer.
Not the original 1968 version, but I was involved in the discussions leading to the revised report, as a post-doc under Barry Mailloux. I also wrote what's probably the most complete unfinished Algol 68 compiler in existence back then (source code still available if anyone wants to read it). I also had a long discussion with some of the guys in charge of the ADA project -- they really wanted the security that comes from completely automatic storage management but they couldn't afford to have their weapons systems stop for garbage collection, I told them exactly what the trade-offs were -- too what extent they could have their cake and eat it too. In the end they decided that they could afford neither the language complexity of the garbage-collector-free storage management schemes, nor the garbage collection delays. I'm not sure to what extent they ended up avoiding dynamically allocated storage in the first official language definition. -- hendrik _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
