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From: zenith-steven@cs.yale.edu (Steven Ericsson Zenith)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: He's not the only one at it again!
Message-ID: <25680@cs.yale.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 90 13:15:54 GMT
References: <1288@s8.Morgan.COM> <58372@lanl.gov>
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In article <58372@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
> [...]  my response was to the claim tha only ALGOL had
>effect on future language developement. [...]

In the postings that I have seen on the subject I don't think anyone
was claiming that ALGOL was the *only* language to affect future
language development. I did claim that ALGOL had a greater influence
than FORTRAN or COBOL - this may or may not be true. The discussion
seems to have degenerated into one of bigotry - "My favorite language
is better than your favorite language", and I don't think we stand to
gain from this. 

Nor did I intend to imply by my claim that ALGOL was a perfect
language - it surely wasn't - but it's ok to make honest mistakes,
that's how we learn and how our science evolves. It is an incredible
arrogance - characteristic of Comp Science and Architecture (and
perhaps other sciences too) to believe that we have the ultimate
solution in our hands and that solutions cannot evolve - arrogance
enforced generally by making a plea to the god of "architectural
purity". Such arrogance is ignorant and blind (I should place these
comments in context. I'm not directing these comments at any member of
this discussion - I am venting frustrations born by my involvement in
other language and architectural developments.) - for some reason I
expect people to be more dispassionate about such things.

For its time ALGOL was a reasonable solution given what had gone
before, the style of its definition in the ALGOL 60 report was perhaps
more significant than the language itself - it led the way for many
other language reports - even today. Of the various language reports
that sat on my desk as I wrote the Occam 2 Reference (- and please,
let's not get into the deficiencies of that language design :-) the
ALGOL 60 report was the most useful example to have.

Regards,
Steven.
-- 
--
Steven Ericsson Zenith              *            email: zenith@cs.yale.edu
Fax: (203) 466 2768                 |            voice: (203) 432 1278
| "The world is a sacred vessel; It is not something that can be acted upon. |