Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!jack
From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Mr Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Algol 60 vs Algol 68 (was "stack machines (Burroughs)")
Message-ID: <1368@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 17 Jun 88 10:36:09 GMT
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Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
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andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) writes:

>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.

ICL uses S3, a subset of Algol 68, as its standard systems programming
language (its main mainframe OS, VME, is written in it). They stripped it down
to make it a pure stack language, but retained the type system - including the
gruesome coercions, which almost make C casts look elegant. On their 2900
series architecture it goes pretty fast - there have been ICL and third-party
compilers for languages with better reputations for efficiency, like Pascal,
Fortran and C, but none of them come near S3 for speed.
-- 
ARPA: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk       USENET: jack@cs.glasgow.uucp
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Mail: Jack Campin, Computing Science Dept., Glasgow Univ., 17 Lilybank Gardens,
      Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND     work 041 339 8855 x 6045; home 041 556 1878