Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!jack
From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Message-ID: <1916@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Nov 88 09:45:47 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <591@tuck.nott-cs.UUCP> <404@ubbpc.UUCP>
Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
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wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) wrote:
> [ 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...

> 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...

ICL used S3, a dialect of Algol 68, to write their VME operating system, a
HUGE program.  On their machine architecture (not unlike the Burroughs stack
machines) it runs phenomenally fast.

Mor importantly, Algol 68 continues to inspire clean language designs - its
concern for orthogonality is reflected in ML, most lazy functional languages,
Smalltalk, PS-algol, FAD,... and what did Pascal and C lead to?  Ada and C++,
both messed up with piles of ad hoc restrictions that are absolutely
unintelligible without knowing how the compiler and run-time systems work.
This is how to design a high-level language?
-- 
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Mail: Jack Campin, Computing Science Dept., Glasgow Univ., 17 Lilybank Gardens,
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