Infocom on PDP-11

[John Foust]

At 12:10 AM 5/11/2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
>As far as sophistication goes -- a better measure than simply how
>clever or nifty a thing is -- how far did it advance the state of
>the art?  Good Algol's in the early 1960's look like stuff robbed
>from the far-flung future. [...]
>Algol had it's share of horrors, but man it is the basis for
>nearly all modern languages. 

Links for the intrigued...  the report:

http://www.masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm

and an implementation for MS-DOS and CP/M, with source examples:

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/algol60.html

Speaking as that voice from the future, reading ALGOL makes
me say "You don't want to do it that way."  GOTO had not yet
been exorcised.  Did I see a computed goto, where the expression
calculates the label?  Eeek.  Certainly it was a step forward,
but we've also learned a lot since then.  When people complain
that computer languages haven't changed much, remind them
of the stuff that's fallen out of recommended practice.

- John