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A history of ALGOL 68

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C. H. LindseyAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, Issue 3

Pages 97 - 132

https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155365

Published: 01 March 1993 Publication History

Abstract

ALGOL 68 is a language with a lot of “history”. The reader will hear of discord, resignations, unreadable documents, a minority report, and all manner of politicking. But although ALGOL 68 was produced by a committee (and an unruly one at that), the language itself is no camel. Indeed, the rigorous application of the principle of “orthogonality” makes it one of the cleanest languages around, as I hope to show. Moreover, when the language came to be revised, the atmosphere was quite different enabling a much more robust and readable defining document to be produced in a spirit of true cooperation. There are some lessons here for future language design efforts, but I am not optimistic that they have been learned.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 28, Issue 3

March 1993

363 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/155360

Editor:
Richard L. Wexelblat
ACM SIGPLAN Notices; IDA/CSED, Alexandria, VA

Issue’s Table of Contents

HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages
April 1993
370 pages
ISBN:0897915704
DOI:10.1145/154766
Conference Chair:
John A. N. Lee,
Program Chair:
Jean E. Sammet

Copyright © 1993 ACM.

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Published: 01 March 1993

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 28, Issue 3

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1352383.1352420
Schilling J(1995)Dynamically-valued constantsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/202176.20217730:4(13-20)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1995
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/202176.202177
Wirfs-Brock AEich B(2020)JavaScript: the first 20 yearsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33863274:HOPL(1-189)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386327
Gibbons J(2020)The School of SquiggolFormal Methods. FM 2019 International Workshops10.1007/978-3-030-54997-8_2(35-53)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54997-8_2

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