Comment by somat
25 days ago
Yes, massively influential, but was it ever used or popular?, I always think of it as sort of the poster child for the danger of "design by committee".
Sure it's ideas spawned many of today's languages, But wasn't that because at the time nobody could afford to actually implement the spec. So we ended up with a ton of "algols buts" (like algol but can actually be implemented and runs on real hardware).
Yes, for example UK navy had a system developed in Algol 68 subset.
https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-abstract/22/2/114/42...
Used extensively on Burroughs mainframes.
Wow, The Burroughs large system had special instructions explicitly for efficient algol use. You could almost say it was algol hardware. but algol 60 not 68.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_Large_Systems
There is a large system emulator that runs in a browser, I did not get any algol written but I did have way to much fun going through the boot sequence.
https://www.phkimpel.us/B5500/webUI/B5500Console.html
Burroughs used an Algol60 derivative (not '68)
ESPOL initially, which evolved into NEWP.
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