Re: r29976 - docs/Perl6/Spec

[Neville Dempsey]

On Mar 10, 9:49 am, la...@wall.org (Larry Wall) wrote:
> Algol68 would have done much better had it been Open Source software...

If Algol68 was *GPL* Open-Source, then I could take the Zilog Z80
implementation Algol68C and have a HLL on my TI-84 _Pocket_ Calculator
(rather the existing choice of "TI-BASIC" or asm... sigh):
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-84_Plus_series
* http://www.80bus.co.uk/publications/magazines/LSG3.pdf - R Anderson
Pg52

Using Algol68 on a pocket calculator must then set some kind of record
as
being the longest "long-gestated Bubble Bobble" ever:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Bobble

> Incidentally, I programmed in AlgolW on a Burroughs machine once,
> long, long ago in a galaxy far away...
SNAP.  AlgolW was my first HLL. But I suspect you mean a IBM 360.
Maybe
you can find more details of a Burroughs implementation? (esp source
code)
c.f. http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Algol%20W

The only other AlgolW implementation I know of it is the 2008
translator
by Glyn Webster: http://www.jampan.co.nz/~glyn/

NevilleDNZ

Re: r29976 - docs/Perl6/Spec

[Neville Dempsey]

On Mar 10, 9:49 am, la...@wall.org (Larry Wall) wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:10:29AM +1100, Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
> :       Algol 68 is notorious as a failure.  Let's hope things are
> : different here.
So they say: 
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=site:www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD+algol-68

There may be some similarities with perl6.

I speculate that if Algol68 was named something else, then the Algol60
implementers
would not have gotten their noses so far out of joint.

BTW: "notorious as a failure" is a good way of describing Algol68 as
it was not exactly a failure.
For example several Operating Systems were written in Algol68
variants:  DRA's Flex, ICL's VME,
the Soviet Эльбрус-1 and the Cambridge CAP computer.
c.f. 
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/bbcoc/ancient_operating_system_written_in_algol68_with/

It google is looking for a

> Alternately, they probably would have bootstrapped Algol into its
> own ubiquitous language had the Open Source movement existed back then.
> History would have been much different.
Moot point...  to this day it is virtually impossible to get
sufficient access to the
source code to the classic Algol68 compilers.  The only exception
being the
partial release of Algol68RS (missing the format/transport/io
libraries)



> Incidentally, I programmed in Algol W on a Burroughs machine once,
> long, long ago in a galaxy far away...
Algol W was my first HLL too. There is a Algol-W to C implementation:
aw2c: http://www.jampan.co.nz/~glyn/
It is opensource - save for the test suite.

I think the original Algol-W compile's source - written in PL/360 has
long since been lost.

N