> On Jan 13, 2025, at 6:00 PM, David Wade via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 13/01/2025 22:19, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 1/13/2025 3:57 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
>>> On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote:
>>>
>>
>>> Funny when the 8 and 16 bit micros hit the market, Algol seemed to vanish
>>> off the face of the earth. Was 64KB too small a address space?
>>>
>>
>
> More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic into a 4K
> ROM so it will work without a disk drive.
> Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in.
Interpreting or compiling are implementation options entirely independent of
the language. I don't know of ALGOL 60 interpreters but there's no reason why
one could not be built. I do know of an ALGOL 68 (subset) interpreter, by
Ammeraal at CWI.
> Its far easier to learn than Algol.
That's debatable. My father (a physicist and professor of metrology) found
ALGOL-60 to be quite readable, he simply treated it as an odd dialect of
English. (He never wrote any, but he certainly reviewed applications written
for his lab by the department programmer.) And for me it was my first language
(Fortran II being next, and Basic-Plus fourth).
>> ALGOL ran just fine on the PDP-11.
>>
>
> Thats not an 8-bit micro and needed a decent disk to run Algol
A tiny disk; RT-11 ALGOL is 9k so it would fit very easily on a floppy. And
the first Algol compiler, for the EL-X1, ran on a papertape system; no magnetic
storage at all. Hm, it would be amusing to port it to a Raspberry Pico... $4
ALGOL machine!
FWIW, if I want a tiny language for ROM or other deeply embedded applications,
I would pick Forth way sooner than Basic. But again, language preferences are
very much a matter of personal taste.
paul
