From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f47e0c6e2e5fd00d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "David A. Cobb" Subject: Re: Function name problem Date: 2000/01/17 Message-ID: <388262EA.3F0099B2@home.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 573548845 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <85qecu$24r$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <85stib$a2g1@news.cis.okstate.edu> <38824AD2.DC1F56D5@home.com> <85thmu$a2g2@news.cis.okstate.edu> X-Accept-Language: en,pdf Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.wwck1.ri.home.com 948069098 24.10.108.106 (Sun, 16 Jan 2000 16:31:38 PST) Organization: @home MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 16:31:38 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-01-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: David Starner wrote: > > On Sun, 16 Jan 2000 22:48:51 GMT, David A. Cobb wrote: > >Those of us with gray beards and long if flaky memories may remember > >"Algol '8x" (I don't recall the x). An over-ambitious work by theorists > >that was still around when Ada was being designed. Had a lot of > >symbology about user defined operators. I could never read any of it. > >'C' is hard enough to read. > > Do you mean Algol 68? Sounds like a description of that language, and > it would be "still around" when Ada was being designed (late 70's-early > 80's). comp.lang.misc had someone pushing it as the alpha and omega > of languages recently (to be fair, it was no more radically than many > of us push Ada or the Perl people push Perl - it was only the language > that made it memberable.) > > -- > David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org > If you wish to strive for peace of soul then believe; > if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. > -- Friedrich Nietzsche Actually, David, I did mean '83(?). I doubt there was ever a compiler for that one: I don't think it got beyond the pages of CACM. Algol'68 was a pretty close ancestor of the Pascal/Ada family of syntax's. As I said, the 1980's attempt to update it seemed to get pretty bogged down in just how radical it could be - with very formal semantics. Since even the unsuccessful branches are part of any evolutionary tree, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the lessons from that influenced the Ada design team. Algol was also more popular in Europe than in the US, and the designers could have been closely familiar with the work.