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Am I understanding correctly that he was the sole maintainer of Algol at the age of 86 years old? Or was it more supervisory / BDFL?


algol isn't a piece of software, so it doesn't have maintainers. i don't know if the algol committee ever officially disbanded but wirth had already resigned before algol 68 came out


Oh sorry, I misremembered the list and meant Oberon but fair point. I had just noticed that the last stable release was in 2020.

If I had read more closely to the wording, the language was _designed_ by Wirth but that doesn't necessiate him being fingers-to-keyboard (or whatever modality) despite it saying he was the developer.


oh, i guess you could say he was bdflish




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