This is related to Algol 60, IMO, not Algol 68. Algol 60 had a big
influence on some machines in the 1960s.
The German mainframe Telefunken TR4, designed in the late 1950s, was a
fully transistorized machine and was for some
years the fastest machine built in Europe. And, as Dijkstra once said
Discussion List on behalf of
Laurence Chiu <05c4ba336ee7-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2024 3:47 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Algol
I cut my teeth on Algol also at university - on a Burroughs B6700 mainframe
running MCP. Burroughs at the tim
I cut my teeth on Algol also at university - on a Burroughs B6700 mainframe
running MCP. Burroughs at the time were unique in that there was no
assembler language. Everything was written in a HLL, MCP was written in
ESPOL, the compiler for which was written in DCAlgol. That was just Algol
ALGOL 68 was a big step forward, but the standard was hard to read because it
lacked adequate comments in the formal definition.
Simula was based on ALGOL 60 and was arguably the first OO language. Ada was
derived from ALGOL via Pascal.
And, of course, PL/I owes a lot to ALGOL 60.
--
Shmuel
I wonder whether Alan Kay is the author of an article I read during the late
'70s in PC Computing; the name sounds familiar. I made copies and kept them
for a while, but I've lost track of them now. In that article the writer spoke
of teaching students who came not knowing much about computer
I don't believe that ALGOL 68had much influence on later languages, possibly
because the formal definition was seriously under-commented.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי
נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר
From
Algol 68 was quite a lot different from the previous version, from memory,
and seems to have influenced everything else since, including C.
I wish I'd used '68 more when I had the chance.
Alan Kay described computing as a 'pop culture' and I see his point--we
don't often learn from history
I did a lot of coding in Algol during my time at a local University in the late
'70s. My impression at the time was that it had a serious paucity of built-in
functions, but that it enabled me to write my own and make them easily
available to my programs. So I stuffed a library full of I/O
