From: janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com   
      
   On 28.10.2025 15:59, David Brown wrote:   
   > On 28/10/2025 03:00, Janis Papanagnou wrote:   
   >> On 27.10.2025 21:39, Michael S wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>>> [ snip Lua statements ]   
   >   
   >>> Algol 68 is a great source of inspiration for designers of   
   >>> programming languages.   
   >>   
   >> Obviously.   
   >>   
   >>> Useful programming language it is not.   
   >>   
   >> I have to read that as valuation of its usefulness for you.   
   >> (Otherwise, if you're speaking generally, you'd be just wrong.)   
   >>   
   >   
   > The uselessness of Algol 68 as a programming language in the modern   
   > world is demonstrated by the almost total non-existence of serious tools   
   > and, more importantly, real-world code in the language.   
      
   Obviously you are mixing the terms usefulness and dissemination   
   (its actual use). Please accept that I'm differentiating here.   
      
   There's quite some [historic] languages that were very useful but   
   couldn't disseminate. (For another prominent example cf. Simula,   
   that invented not only the object oriented principles with classes   
   and inheritance, was a paragon for quite some OO-languages later,   
   and it made a lot more technical and design inventions, some even   
   now still unprecedented.) It's a pathological historic phenomenon   
   that programming languages from the non-US American locations had   
   inherent problems to disseminate especially back these days!   
      
   Reasons for dissemination of a language are multifold; back then   
   (but to a degree also today) they were often determined by political   
   and marketing factors... (you can read about that in various historic   
   documents and also in later ruminations about computing history)   
      
   > It certainly /was/ a useful programming language, long ago,   
      
   ...as you seem to basically agree to here. (At least as far as you   
   couple usefulness with dissemination.)   
      
   > but it has not been   
   > seriously used outside of historical hobby interest for half a century.   
      
   (Make that four decades. It's been used in the mid 1980's. - Later   
   I didn't follow it anymore, so I cannot tell about the 1990's.)   
      
   (I also disagree in your valuation "hobby interest"; for "hobbies"   
   there were easier accessible languages used, not systems that were   
   back these days mainly available on mainframes only.)   
      
   As far as you mean in programming software systems, that may be true;   
   I cannot tell that I'd have an oversight who did use it. I've read   
   about various applications, though; amongst them that it's even been   
   used as a systems programming language (where I was astonished about).   
      
   > And unlike other ancient languages (like Cobol or Fortran) there is no   
   > code of relevance today written in the language.   
      
   Probably right. (That would certainly be also my guess.)   
      
   > Original Algol was   
   > mostly used in research, while Algol 68 was mostly not used at all.  As   
   > C.A.R. Hoare said, "As a tool for the reliable creation of sophisticated   
   > programs, the language was a failure".   
      
   I don't know the context of his statement. If you know the language   
   you might admit that reliable software is exactly one strong property   
   of that language. (Per se already, but especially so if compared to   
   languages like "C", the language discussed in this newsgroup, with an   
   extremely large dissemination and also impact.)   
      
   >   
   > I'm sure there are /some/ people who have or will write real code in   
   > Algol 68 in modern times   
      
   The point was that the language per se was and is useful. But its   
   actual usage for developing software systems seems to have been of   
   little and more so it's currently of no importance, without doubt.   
      
   > (the folks behind the new gcc Algol 68   
   > front-end want to be able to write code in the language),   
      
   There's more than the gcc folks. (I've heard, that gcc has taken some   
   substantial code from Genie, an Algol 68 "compiler-interpreter" that   
   is still maintained. BTW; I'm for example using that one, not gcc's.)   
      
   > but it is very much a niche language.   
      
   It's _functionally_ a general purpose language, not a niche language   
   (in the sense of "special purpose language"). Its dissemination makes   
   it to a "niche language", that's true. It's in practice just a dead   
   language. It's rarely used by anyone. But it's a very useful language.   
      
   Janis   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)