Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:6983 comp.arch:21589 Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!kodak!ispd-newsserver!ism.isc.com!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Subject: Re: Algol68 Message-ID: <1991Mar22.013748.4944@ico.isc.com> Summary: theory, reality? Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO References: <3787@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> <9168@castle.ed.ac.uk> Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1991 01:37:48 GMT yfcw14@castle.ed.ac.uk (K P Donnelly) writes: > mo@messy.bellcore.com (Michael O'Dell) writes: > >Learning Algol68 as a student did wonders for understanding other > >languages, in particular, declarations in C. I felt learning about Algol68 (can't say I learned it; we didn't have a working compiler) did a lot for conceptual understanding. It was one of the cleanest languages in terms of [amount of power] relative to [number of fundamental concepts] I've ever seen. SO... > Agreed!! Why are we not using Algol68 now when it is so much better > than other languages. Is it, as I suspect, that people did not realise > how good it was?... That might be true, in a very real sense and for a very good reason: It was too hard to figure it out! There was no K&R or Jensen&Wirth for it. There was the _Informal_Introduction_..., which was a wonderful book (in spite of the table of contents, which was a clumsy nuisance), but it didn't really answer serious questions or lay down the law. Then there was the _Report_, which was nearly inscrutable, and the _Revised_Report_, which was worse. It took far too much initial study to be able to understand what the report was saying, and it took far too much general familiarity to use it to answer a question. (Particularly in the revised report, chasing down all the myriad productions sent you all over the language...and the worst of it was that the simple concept "this is not allowed" was expressed as giving you something to search for, which didn't exist! If it came down to MURF MORFETY FOOBLE REFFOOBLETY, and you couldn't find a definition for that, it wasn't legal.) >...Is it because it was bypassed by Pascal, which was > designed as a teaching language but ended up being used for lots of > things it was never intended for?... Yes, another dose of reality: Pascal was simple and it was implemented. The implementation was widely available. Therefore people used it. It had the necessary initial kick to start the positive-feedback loop. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.