Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!tektronix!orca!tekecs!frip!andrew
From: andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Algol 60 vs Algol 68 (was "stack machines (Burroughs)")
Message-ID: <10064@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Date: 11 Jun 88 20:01:11 GMT
References: <1521@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1532@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <476@pcrat.UUCP> <2868@louie.udel.EDU> <370@dlscg1.UUCP> <3147@polyslo.UUCP>
Sender: andrew@tekecs.TEK.COM
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon
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[]

	"And the version of Algol that they are running is Algol 60
	{not even Algol 68, but Algol 60! ... Algol 68 does support
	Data structures.  And most smart companies have upgraded their
	systems to Algol 68 or beyond.  Why Unisys hasn't, I don't
	know."

These comments seem to reflect only a passing familiarity with
Algol 68.  Algol 68 resembles Algol 60 no more closely than PL/I
resembles Fortran 66.  A pure Algol 60 program will get nowhere if
pushed through an Algol 68 compiler.

There really isn't any "beyond" to Algol 68 since the 1975 Revised
Report.  It's a dead language.  And that's too bad; while its model of
computation is distant from that of real machines (making it an
inappropriate language for most low level systems programming), it does
an admirable job in its stated domain of algorithmic description, and
is great for applications programming.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (andrew%tekecs.tek.com@relay.cs.net)   [ARPA]