[cctalk] Re: Try Algol 68 on Windows

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jan 13, 2025, at 5:10 PM, Martin Bishop via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote:
> 
> Ben
> 
> I shall simply comment that for a useless language it did a lot of good, 
> signal processing, work for me all but 50 years ago
> 
> As an example, you could define matrix operators with parametric dimensions 
> and write complex matrix (Riccati) equations "naturally".  The code was easy 
> to verify, if not efficient on sparse matrices.  But, they provided a gold 
> standard to commission the efficient code and validate its computations.
> 
> Even now "languages" that can return dynamically dimensioned results on the 
> heap are a bit thin on the ground, and Algol68R took care of the garbage 
> collection and had better fault dumps than I have seen since.
> 
> And, the syntax was defined in BNF - just like Ada and VHDL
> 
> Martin

Indeed, BNF was created in the Algol 60 language definition (the Revised 
Report).

        paul