There's a lot of hearsay in that articles, and a lot of sentiment rooted in the particulars of that time.
Sure, it was a complex thing in the late 60s/early 70s. Sure, Wirth came up with something simpler. But I'm missing a deeper analysis, especially with a more modern view point where basically any language is at least as complex as Algol 68[0].
> Arguably Wirth’s Algol-W was a better successor to Algol-60
I might not even disagree, but what were the arguments, and how are they holding up?
> and arguably did not have the same connections to industry as the likes of Fortran and Cobol
Sure. But neither did Algol-W or Pascal. And pretty much anything else in the 20th century.
EWD comes up as a dissenter for Algol-68, and the longer my career as a software developer the more I disagree with him on anything that isn't pure math.
The appellation is in some part due to his custom of writing monographs for himself titled EWD-n[1]. They are a fascinating mix of deep mathematical and philosophical insight and curmudgeonly reflective essaying.
Yeah, if EWD had had his way, very little software would ever have been written. I think his insistence on proving the correctness of imperative programs is understandable but entirely wrong headed. The sheer amount of insight needed to get through the working day would be unattainable by most and unsustainable for all but a few.
Not really, I did an implementation in the late 70s, ran on a mainframe of the time (1MHz 6Mb). The language itself is not much more than modern C in scope - and in fact many ideas that were new in 68 are expected in modern languages
The big problem was that the spec was essentially unreadable.
Sure, it was a complex thing in the late 60s/early 70s. Sure, Wirth came up with something simpler. But I'm missing a deeper analysis, especially with a more modern view point where basically any language is at least as complex as Algol 68[0].
> Arguably Wirth’s Algol-W was a better successor to Algol-60
I might not even disagree, but what were the arguments, and how are they holding up?
> and arguably did not have the same connections to industry as the likes of Fortran and Cobol
Sure. But neither did Algol-W or Pascal. And pretty much anything else in the 20th century.
[0]: http://cowlark.com/2009-11-15-go/