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From: smryan@garth.UUCP (sous-realiste)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Algol Bashing (Re: He's not the only one at it again!)
Summary: Those who cannot learn from history are forced to reimplement it.
Message-ID: <656@garth.UUCP>
Date: 7 Aug 90 18:43:13 GMT
References: <388@e2big.mko.dec.com> <25630@cs.yale.edu> <2404@l.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Jul26.020229.2205@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (sous-realiste)
Organization: intergraph/apd in sunny california
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Politics: Save California! Yankee Imperialists Go Home!

>#I claim I have made a strong case against ALGOL being even a good programming
>#language for mathematics. 
>
>Because certain computers had hardware instructions that ALGOL could
>not use, then ALGOL is not a good programming language for

The 60 in Algol60 refers to 1960. Would you care to compare it to other
languages of 1960? Fortran? Was there anything else but assembly?

Algol58/60/61 was the first international effort to design a machine independent
language. It has many least common denominator problems, and many inadequacies
(no string variables at all), but it was also very innovative:
	- block scoping.
	- recursion.
	- (self) documenting: (procedure calls).
	- type checking of procedure parameters.
	- arrays had dynamic upper and lower bounds.
	- array parameters included the array bounds.
	- nestable procedures.
	- boolean type.
	- own vs local variables.
	- conditional expressions.
	- if-then-else statements.
	- for-:=-step-until-while-do loops.
	- free formatted source.
	- formal context-free syntax definition.
	- formalised parameter passing and procedure invocation rules.
	- separation of lexical and syntactic considerations.

If you want a language to beat up on, try Algol68. It is of the same vintage
as Fortran 66, Pascal, C, PL/I, Cobol 69, and was an attempt to fix the known
shortcomings of Algol60.

By the way, I believe Algol 60 is still in use. How many of you are still
using Fortran II or its predecessors?
-- 
Her somber eyes consider all        ||/+\==/+\||                     Steven Ryan
that loom and tower, large and tall.||\=/++\=/||       ...!uunet!ingr!apd!smryan
Her everyday is always new          ||/=\++/=\||...!{apple|pyramid}!garth!smryan
and fills her eyes of frail blue.   ||\+/==\+/||   2400 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA