Personally, I think the whole C tangent was a misstep and would love to see Algo 68 turn into Algo 26 or 27. I sort of like C and C++ and many other languages which came, but they have issues. I think Algo 68 could develop into something better than C++, it has some of the pieces already in place.
Admittedly, every language I really enjoy and get along with is one of those languages that produced little compared to the likes of C (APL, Tcl/Tk, Forth), and as a hobbyist I have no real stake in the game.
I think what C is missing is everything that people fall back onto clever use of pointers and macros to implement. Not that I think C should have all those things, Zig does a decent job of showing alternatives.
Whilst I think that C has its place, my personal choice of Algol 26 or 27 would be CLU – a highly influential, yet little known and underrated Algol inspired language. CLU is also very approachable and pretty compact.
Consider exploring Ada 2022 as a capable successor to Algol. Its well supported in GCC and scales well from very small to very large projects. Some information is at https://learn.adacore.com/ and https://alire.ada.dev/
That task would be beyond my skills, as I said, I am just a hobbyist. I think it would be interesting to see what would result from going back to one of those early foundational languages and developing a modern language from it. With a language like Algol we don't have the decades of evolution (baggage) which are a big part of languages like C and C++ and trickle into the languages they inspired even if they are trying to remove that baggage. So, what would we get if we went back to the start and built a modern language off of Algol? What would that look like?
I've actually been toying with writing an Algol 68 compiler myself for a while.
While I doubt I'll do any major development in it, I'll definitely have a play with it, just to revisit old memories and remind myself of its many innovations.
Personally, I think the whole C tangent was a misstep and would love to see Algo 68 turn into Algo 26 or 27. I sort of like C and C++ and many other languages which came, but they have issues. I think Algo 68 could develop into something better than C++, it has some of the pieces already in place.
Admittedly, every language I really enjoy and get along with is one of those languages that produced little compared to the likes of C (APL, Tcl/Tk, Forth), and as a hobbyist I have no real stake in the game.
I wonder about what you think is wrong with C? C is essentially a much simplified subset of ALGOL68. So what is missing in C?
Proper strings and arrays for starters, instead of being pointers that the programmer is responsible for doing length housekeeping.
8 replies →
I think what C is missing is everything that people fall back onto clever use of pointers and macros to implement. Not that I think C should have all those things, Zig does a decent job of showing alternatives.
2 replies →
Whilst I think that C has its place, my personal choice of Algol 26 or 27 would be CLU – a highly influential, yet little known and underrated Algol inspired language. CLU is also very approachable and pretty compact.
Consider exploring Ada 2022 as a capable successor to Algol. Its well supported in GCC and scales well from very small to very large projects. Some information is at https://learn.adacore.com/ and https://alire.ada.dev/
Is like to order a complementary question to the sibling one. What are you going to add to (/remove from?) Algol 68 to get Algol 26?
That task would be beyond my skills, as I said, I am just a hobbyist. I think it would be interesting to see what would result from going back to one of those early foundational languages and developing a modern language from it. With a language like Algol we don't have the decades of evolution (baggage) which are a big part of languages like C and C++ and trickle into the languages they inspired even if they are trying to remove that baggage. So, what would we get if we went back to the start and built a modern language off of Algol? What would that look like?
Wouldn't that be some form of Pascal?
I've actually been toying with writing an Algol 68 compiler myself for a while.
While I doubt I'll do any major development in it, I'll definitely have a play with it, just to revisit old memories and remind myself of its many innovations.