Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 07.04.2024 00:57, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

 
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.

Indeed, it became the base of a huge tree of important programming
languages.

 
Algol 68 was a bit less influential in terms of language features

I like it more for its formal coherence than for specific features.

But of course it also has a lot of features; besides some mentioned
in your post, e.g., the generalized 'for' loop (that can even be
abbreviated for control structure subsets), but that we also find
(even in a more generalized version) already in Simula 67, BTW.

(I think
C “int”, “char”, “struct” and “union”, and the “long” and “short”
qualifiers came from there, and csh “if ... fi” as well), [...]

It was more a base for the Bourne shell family (and its successors,
including POSIX shell through ksh88). But yes, it influenced quite
some languages. And, yes, it was less influential than Algol 60.

Janis