Algol & MTS / was Re: Bootstrappable language

[Brent Hilpert]

Paul Koning wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "Brent" == Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> writes:
> 
>  Brent> ...A few other people mentioned but no more about the origins of
>  Brent> the language/effort.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algol_W says that it came from Niklaus
> Wirth (inventor of Pascal).  That fits a vague memory -- it was a
> proposed successor to Algol-60 but wasn't adopted and Algol-68 was
> picked instead.  This caused various big names of the time to go
> ballistic; I still remember getting scorched by Dijkstra when I
> mentioned Algol-68 to him (innocently; I didn't know any of the
> background at the time).

> It doesn't sound like Waterloo is the W in this case.
(agreed)

Very interesting. Thanks for pulling that out. (I often
forget to look at new things like Wiki for old things like this)
Sounds like it may be considered in part an intervening step on the way
to Wirth's development of Pascal then.

(I will point out the following from the Wiki page though :) :
  "Algol W @ Everything2 An informal but detailed description of the
   language by a former user, with sidebars extolling Algol W over
   Pascal as an Educational programming language."
)

(I still have the greenbar listings/printouts of the AlgolW
programs/assignments I wrote.)