Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> writes:

On 06/04/2024 17:57, 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.

That doesn't match my experience.

Quite right.  Algol 60 died, for all practical purposes,
half a century ago.  Algol 68 may be a niche interest, but it is
still a nice language, and its [dwindling] band of adherents and
practitioners still use it and prefer it to C and other more
recent languages.

I've never heard "Algol" by itself used to refer to Algol 68, which had
enough changes to be essentially a different language, and one which
didn't really replace Algol 60 (though it was clearly intended to).

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL> agrees.

The relative popularity of Algol 60 vs. 68 doesn't necessarily change
what "Algol" means.

[...]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
Working, but not speaking, for Medtronic
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */