11 Dec
2008
11 Dec
'08
2:57 p.m.
Paul Koning wrote:
>>>> "Brent" == Brent
Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> writes:
Brent> ...A few other people mentioned but no more about the origins of
Brent> the language/effort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algol_W says that it came from Niklaus
Wirth (inventor of Pascal). That fits a vague memory -- it was a
proposed successor to Algol-60 but wasn't adopted and Algol-68 was
picked instead. This caused various big names of the time to go
ballistic; I still remember getting scorched by Dijkstra when I
mentioned Algol-68 to him (innocently; I didn't know any of the
background at the time). It doesn't sound like Waterloo is the W in this
case.
(agreed)
Very interesting. Thanks for pulling that out. (I often
forget to look at new things like Wiki for old things like this)
Sounds like it may be considered in part an intervening step on the way
to Wirth's development of Pascal then.
(I will point out the following from the Wiki page though :) :
"Algol W @ Everything2 An informal but detailed description of the
language by a former user, with sidebars extolling Algol W over
Pascal as an Educational programming language."
)
(I still have the greenbar listings/printouts of the AlgolW
programs/assignments I wrote.)