11 May
2005
11 May
'05
5:49 a.m.
At 12:10 AM 5/11/2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
As far as sophistication goes -- a better measure than
simply how
clever or nifty a thing is -- how far did it advance the state of
the art? Good Algol's in the early 1960's look like stuff robbed
from the far-flung future. [...]
Algol had it's share of horrors, but man it is the basis for
nearly all modern languages.
Links for the intrigued... the report:
http://www.masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm
and an implementation for MS-DOS and CP/M, with source examples:
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/algol60.html
Speaking as that voice from the future, reading ALGOL makes
me say "You don't want to do it that way." GOTO had not yet
been exorcised. Did I see a computed goto, where the expression
calculates the label? Eeek. Certainly it was a step forward,
but we've also learned a lot since then. When people complain
that computer languages haven't changed much, remind them
of the stuff that's fallen out of recommended practice.
- John