Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!paul
From: paul@unisoft.UUCP (n)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol 60 vs Algol 68 (was "stack machines (Burroughs)")
Message-ID: <1188@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jun 88 16:54:13 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> <10064@tekecs.TEK.COM> <1988Jun11.200757.12285@light.uucp>
Reply-To: paul@unisoft.UUCP (Paul Campbell)
Lines: 52

In article <1988Jun11.200757.12285@light.uucp> bvs@light.UUCP (Bakul Shah) writes:
>In article <10064@tekecs.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
>
>I wonder how much of C design was influenced by Algol 68 as most
>of K&R C seems to map almost directly to Algol 68 and where C
>differs is usually where the compiler's job is simplified.  Come
>to think of it, a major subset of Algol 68 with a new and concise
>syntax (sort of like C's) can make a very elegant, type safe and
>well rounded language.


(speaking as someone who once wrote an Algol 68 compiler ...) in actual fact
the language was ahead of its time in terms of compiler technology, nowdays
languages are usually designed so that the are relatively easy to generate
code for (this is because most language designers are also compiler writers
and don't add things they know are going to be excessively inefficient or
difficult to implement - smart people). Algol 68 is of a similar complexity
to Ada, in fact Ada is one of the few 'modern' languages to include many of
the features of Algol 68 (user defined operators etc etc), it was quite
entertaining reading the Ada implementation papers a few years ago and
comparing them with the Algol 68 implementation papers from 10 years
previously (the same things being rediscovered all over again). 
  Probably the main success story from the Algol 68 effort was Pascal, Wirth
was one of Algol 68's designers (he was on the committee) and in Pascal he
implemented all the things in Algol 68 (plus a few extras) that were easy
to implement using the existing technology, the result was a language that
flourished ....


	Paul Campbell

PS: Back to the original topic: I spent a lot of my time on my Algol68 compiler
	trying to figure out how to put it on our Burroughs 6700, my conclusion
	was that it was not possible to implement any of the pointer code
	on the 6700 without interpreting everything and making the result too
	slow to be usefull. One of the main 'problems' with the Burroughs
	environment is that system security and integrety depends on the
	security of code files, ie only a privileged program (a compiler) can
	make a code file and bad code can crash the whole system, this tends
	to discourage system administrators from letting people develop
	compilers on their systems ..... needless to say a real C was out of
	the question ....
	
-- 
Paul Campbell, UniSoft Corp. 6121 Hollis, Emeryville, Ca
	E-mail:		..!{ucbvax,hoptoad}!unisoft!paul  
Nothing here represents the opinions of UniSoft or its employees (except me)
"Nuclear war doesn't prove who's Right, just who's Left" (ABC news 10/13/87)