Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
From: wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Summary: thanks for supporting my thesis.
Message-ID: <408@ubbpc.UUCP>
Date: 29 Nov 88 14:05:51 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <5495@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk>
Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA
Lines: 49

In article <5495@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk>, keith@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk writes:
> In article <7774@aw.sei.cmu.edu>, firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes:
> > Please add the following institutions, all of which either used or taught
> > Algol-68: U. of Oxford, U. of Cambridge, U. of London
> > Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Royal Military College of Science
> Add     University of Liverpool, Dept. CS, Dept. SCM
>           Algol68 R (ICL 1906S) - now defunct as of 1984
>           Algol68 S (Modular One) -  '' ditto ''
>           Algol68 RS (VAX/VMS) - defunct as of 1988 -
>                                  moved to Irvine ADA on HP 850 and 300 series.
>           FLACC Algol68 (VM/CMS) still in use as a teaching language until
>                                  next year.
> > However, a better test of the language as a piece of design is the number >
> > of key concepts it introduced. This includes
> >    formal definition of static semantics using a van-Wingaarden grammar 

Once again, we are using different criteria for success. You are talking about
abstract, ideal success; I am talking about producing a usable tool that would
be widely adopted.

Consider the following criteria for success:

 If Algol-68 had been a success, it would be used on more than 1/10 percent of
the computers in the world.
 If Algol-68 had been a success, it would be used in every developed nation,
not just a few nations (I am defining "developed nation" as one with an entry
in the uucp map files :-) ).
 If Algol-68 had been a success, there would be Algol-78 and Algol-88, and they
would be evolutionary enhancements of Algol-68, not major overhauls.
 If Algol-68 had been a success, Bjarne Stroustrup would have written 
"Algol with classes" :-).
 If Algol-68 had been a success, many programs selling 10,000 to 1,000,000
copies and written in Algol-68 would be on the market.
 If Algol-68 had been a success, Borland would sell Turbo Algol.
 If Algol-68 had been a success, Wirth would not have invented Pascal and
Modula-2.
 If Algol-68 had been a success, UNIX would be written in it.

 Algol-68 fails every of these criteria for success, therefor it is a failure.
                                   QED.

 You may blame lazy compiler writers or the Evil Empire (IBM) for the failure
of Algol-68, but I submit that the root problem was that the Algol-68 committee
could not or would not produce a human-readable spec for the language.
-- 
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_