Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!udel!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
From: wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Summary: Algol 68 failed, by your own evidence.
Message-ID: <404@ubbpc.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 88 13:50:24 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <591@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP>
Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA
Lines: 32

In article <591@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP>, anw@nott-cs.UUCP writes:
> In <391@ubbpc.UUCP>, wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes, amongst
> other things (in the Fortran group):
> 
> > [ I presented the argument that good languages come from individuals, ]
> > [ and bad designs come from committees: I quoted Algol-68 as one of ]
> > [ several examples ]
> 
> [ Andy Walker rebutted that his institution, Nottingham U, UK, used ]
> [ Algol68 A WHOLE LOT, and they liked it A WHOLE LOT ]

 Andy, I now know of 2 (two) institutions that ever tried to use Algol-68 at
all seriously, yours, and Math. Centrum in Amsterdam.
 If that is not an embarrassing debacle for a language design, what, pray tell,
is?  Ten million computer owners elected not to use Algol-68, and (order of
magnitude) 2 institutions chose to use it.
 I realize that scientific truths are not decided democratically, by majority
vote, otherwise one could say "Heroin is good, because millions of people use
it frequently", but, my good man, give us a break.
 I submit that the reason an utterly negligible fraction of the computer
owners in the world use Algol-68 is that the language design was inherently
flawed, and it is my interpretation that these flaws stemmed from the
committee-design process (primarily).
 The primary "benefit" that I see in your institutions' choice of Algol-68 is
that you write programs that nobody else can use, and that your students have
to do extra work learning mainstream languages after they graduate.
 That sounds like a bad decision on the part of Nottingham U.
-- 
Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant	rutgers!liberty!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
Unisys UNIX Portation Center	"What one fool can do, another can!"
P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121		Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by
Blue Bell, PA 19424		Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_