Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler

(fosdem.org)

35 points | by matt_d 4 days ago

3 comments

  • HarHarVeryFunny 2 hours ago

    Algol 68 was a bit before my time, but c.1980 we did learn Algol W (W=Wirth) at Bristol Uni., which was Niklaus Wirth's idea of what Algol 68 should have been, and a predeceesor to Pascal, Modula-2, etc.

    • ninalanyon 1 hour ago

      Apart from it being an interesting technical challenge or hobby is there any mundane practical reason for creating An Algol 68 compiler?

      • snovymgodym 1 hour ago

        I'd love to be corrected, but my intuition tells me probably not.

        The only pragmatic use for a modern Algol 68 compiler I can think of would be to port a legacy codebase to a modern system, but any existing Algol 68 codebase will likely see greater porting challenges arising out of the operating system change than from the programming language.

      • Rochus 3 days ago

        I prefer Simula 67 ;-)

        • srean 3 hours ago

          Modula-2 happened way before my time but was quite taken by it. Especially it's fibres/coroutine features.

          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26688380

          • mrweasel 1 hour ago

            Apparently the Russian Glonass satellites are programmed in Modula-2 [1] which seems like a wild choice.

            1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-2#Russian_radionavigati...

            • pjmlp 30 minutes ago

              Well, back in the 1980's up to early 90's, Modula-2 enjoyed a mild success in Europe.

              Given that it was available in 1978, and the satellites launched in 1982, it seems a plausible choice like any other, given the computing ecosystem at the time.

          • Smalltalker-80 4 hours ago

            Yeah, that Algol code is not very pretty :-). I'm sticking with my namesake from 1980...

            • mhd 3 hours ago

              One thing I always liked about some older languages was being able to have blanks in identifiers. Although I see that they actually managed to invent a new stropping variant that doesn't work with that… For the "kids"…