Re: The joy of ALGOL-like languages

On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 13:17:23 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I think it was ALGOL that first used a stack for all that - not sure.

Lots of features of Algol-60 were specified on a “nice to have, no idea
how to implement this” basis. Then over the succeeding years, a bunch of
clever people went away and figured out how to make it all work. And that
was a major driver in the progress of computer science over that time.

Some of those features turned out to be really useful (e.g. lexical
scoping); others just turned out to be really weird (e.g. call by name).
Overall, it was a learning experience for everybody.