Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On Sat, 6 Apr 2024 18:57:47 +0200, Janis Papanagnou wrote:

I named it always explicitly as "Algol 60" and "Algol 68". But at some
instance of time I read somewhere that "Algol" would "now" refer to
Algol 68, so I changed my habit.

Sure, Algol 60 is way beyond a museum piece by now. But remember, that was
the one that spawned a great number of offshoots, namely the “Algol-like”
language family--or really, superfamily. That included Pascal and its own
offshoots.

Algol 68 was a bit less influential in terms of language features (I think
C “int”, “char”, “struct” and “union”, and the “long” and “short”
qualifiers came from there, and csh “if ... fi” as well), but it did seem
to introduce a bunch of new terminology, some of which caught on, others
did not. See how many you can spot:

* “Elaboration” for the process of executing a program (including possibly
  transforming from source form to an executable form)
* “Transput” instead of “input/output”
* “Heap” for an area in which memory may be dynamically allocated and
  freed in no particular order
* “Overloading” for multiple context-dependent definitions of an operator
* “Name” instead of “pointer” or “address”
* “Mode” instead of “data type”
* “Coercion” for a type conversion
* “Cast” for an explicit type conversion
* “Void” for a construct yielding no value
* “Dereferencing” for following a pointer
* “Slice” for a subarray of an array
* “Pragmat” for compiler directive (I think “pragma” is more common
  nowadays.)