Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!killer!elg
From: elg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Message-ID: <6193@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 22 Nov 88 05:23:12 GMT
References: <404@ubbpc.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 42

in article <404@ubbpc.UUCP>, wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) says:
> 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, I now know of 2 (two) institutions that ever tried to use Algol-68 at
> all seriously, yours, and Math. Centrum in Amsterdam.

Actually, Algol-68 was used by many European universities. It never
caught on here in the States, but that's mainly because the foremost
languages here in the States Cobol and Fortran (no joke!), except in
the high-end CS programs, which used Lisp or, if they used an
Algol-like language, PL/1.

Saying, then, that Algol-68 was an "embarassing debacle" is assuming
an attitude of American ethnocentricism which is, in itself,
embarrasing. 

>  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).

From what I've seen of Algol-68 (admittedly not much), the language
design's flaws are related more to the implementability of certain
language features, and the "trickiness" of using the language to its
full extent... as far as language size and definition goes, I see
little difference between the language defintion of Algol-68 and, say,
Modula-][. 

> Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant	rutgers!liberty!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
> Unisys UNIX Portation Center	"What one fool can do, another can!"

Somehow, when I read the words "Unix Portation Center", I can't get
the image of a pontoon bridge out of my mind ;-). (sorry, you have to
be raised on old WW][ films to know what I'm talking about).

--
Eric Lee Green    ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg
          Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509