Re: Algol68

Re: Algol68

[David A. Hasan]

In article <1991Mar22.013748.4944@ico.isc.com> rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:

[ in response to a discussion of the demise of Algol68... ]

>That might be true, in a very real sense and for a very good reason:  It
>was too hard to figure it out!  There was no K&R or Jensen&Wirth for it.
>There was the _Informal_Introduction_..., which was a wonderful book (in
>spite of the table of contents, which was a clumsy nuisance), but it didn't
>really answer serious questions or lay down the law.  Then there was the
>_Report_, which was nearly inscrutable, and the _Revised_Report_, which was
>worse.  It took far too much initial study to be able to understand what
>the report was saying, and it took far too much general familiarity to use
>it to answer a question.

hmmm...sounds *just* like my frustrations in getting up to
speed in Ada.  The Ada Language Reference Manual is not
exactly an "easy" reference when you're trying to figure out
why something doesn't compile.  And Ada is *full* of
gotchas... at least Algol68 was orthogonal.

-- 
 |   David A. Hasan
 |   hasan@emx.utexas.edu