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: wow, a rational response. Message-ID: <409@ubbpc.UUCP> Date: 29 Nov 88 16:33:54 GMT References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <599@quintus.UUCP> <79153@sun.uucp> Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA Lines: 50 Thank the gods of Internet! I have finally elicited a rational response to my original posting! In article <79153@sun.uucp>, khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering) writes: > In article <406@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes: > >Before we get embroiled in a meaningless argument, let me assert that there > >are at least two criteria for success of a programming language: > > success-1: having lots of neat design ideas, and > > success-2: being widely adopted. > text deleted > > I still maintain that this supports my earlier thesis: that committee- > >designed languages fail and individually-designed languages succeed. > I appreciate your clarification of success, but I think your thesis > remains unsupported. > > Here are some more opinions: > >Ada success-1? failure-2? small group (Ichbiah & Co.)? > too early to tell, but since commercial shops are chosing it for new > work (not yet in droves though) it may very well be a success-2. I > would have classified Ada as a committee Thanks for your input on Ada. I do not know how large Ichbiah's group was, so I did not know whether to call it a committee. > Using US success as criteria for failure-2 [of Algol-68] seems a bit parochial I respectively submit that I was not using US success as a criterion for the failure of Algol-68. I submit the lack of professional, commercial compilers for Algol-68 on UNIX or MS-DOS as evidence that Algol-68 failed worldwide. I quote MS-DOS and UNIX because they are emerging standard operating systems. Even if Manchester U had implemented Algol-68 on MUSS, I consider that community of users to be negligibly small. > >Pascal success-1 success-2 small group > success-1 ?? Nearly every single early implementation had to massively > extend it to make it useful. Code portability was nil, and etc. I consider Pascal to be a teaching and publication language, not a practical application language, so I consider it to be a success, *given Wirth's stated design goals*, not the goals who wanted Pascal to replace FORTRAN, COBOL, or PL/I. I disagree with a lot of Keith's other opinions, but he is rational and intelligent, so I will not quibble with them. (no point in duplicating them here). -- 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_