Infocom on PDP-11

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11
>   From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com>
>   Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 07:49:09 -0500
>     To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>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

Humm, Computed goto.. Sorta like Cs pointer to function.
GOTOs are just another things that can be handy if not abused.

There nothing worse than QB45/dos using nicely structured data
and then littering it with gotos.

I've found most languages that can do something useful 
contain cruft.

Allison