Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!sgi!arisia!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Algol-68 down for the count (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Message-ID: <774@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 30 Nov 88 09:15:22 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <5495@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk> <408@ubbpc.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 47

In article <408@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes:
> If Algol-68 had been a success, it would be used on more than 1/10 percent of
>the computers in the world.
Gee, I guess that means C is a failure.

> 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 :-) ).
By that criterion, I suppose we must reckon 80*86 assembler as one of the
most spectacularly successful languages ever.

> 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.
Be careful when you bring evolution into things: remember that the dinosaurs
were **superior** to the mammals.  We are still waiting for a language which
is as good as Algol 68.

> If Algol-68 had been a success, Bjarne Stroustrup would have written 
>"Algol with classes" :-).
Algol with classes already exists:  it is called Simula 67.  In fact, that
is where the word "class" comes from.  (Simula-67 had *type-safe*
separate compilation, something C++ still lacks.)

> If Algol-68 had been a success, Wirth would not have invented Pascal and
>Modula-2.
Let's see "if Pascal had been a success, Wirth would not have invented
Modula and Modula 2 ..."  Hmm, something wrong with that (:-).

> If Algol-68 had been a success, UNIX would be written in it.
Why?  FORTRAN was a success.  Does it follow that "If FORTRAN had been a
success, UNIX would be written in it"?  (PR1MOS was!)

> Algol-68 fails every of these criteria for success.
Set up a straw man, and surprise! you can knock him down.

> 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.

Have you ever tried to read the formal definition of PL/I?  How about the
INRIA formal specification of ADA?  Nope, the trouble was that the Algol 68
committee were painfully aware of the trouble spots that had been left in
Algol 60 by an informal specification, and tried to make a formal specification,
but people went on preferring informal specifications, loopholes and all.
(Witness the apalling confusion about Pascal I/O, and the fact that ">" in
Common Lisp is not transitive.)  *Other* people soon produced easy-to-read
descriptions of the language.