Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages

On 07.04.2024 15:43, Andy Walker wrote:

 
    I agree;  OTOH, WG2.1 accepted A68 as the "new" Algol.  The
instant question here was what an unadorned "Algol" means, and while
I can see an argument for saying that it shouldn't happen, I can see
no argument for saying that it, by default, refers to A60.

Well, after that other post I decided to explicitly differentiate them
per year suffix to not confuse anyone. That's okay for me. (OTOH I just
notice that I missed to identify "Simula" as "Simula 67"; there's also
"Simula I". But in case of Simula it's anyway more of a version.[*])

 

But Algol 60, Simula, and also Algol 68 are all meaningless today, I
(sadly) dare to say.

 
    You're probably right.  But A68G is still a nice language.  It
creaks in places, and it's not suitable for everything [what is?].  But
it serves all my programming needs.  It has the advantage, in practice,
over C that all the common programming blunders -- use of uninitialised
variables, array accesses out of bounds, numerical overflow, dereferencing
null pointers, memory leaks and consequences thereof, the things that
cause most of the security holes -- are picked up either by the compiler
or at run-time before they can do any damage.  I expect there are modern
languages that also do that, but at my age it's not worth learning a new
language when the old one works perfectly well.

Yes, indeed.

Janis

[*] Nice fact, BTW, that you can compile (almost all) Algol 60
programs with Simula 67 - Algol 60 is [mostly] a subset - but not
with Algol 68, which is a different language.