Re: [GCC] Re: c++ "with" keyword

[Trevor Jenkins <trevor.jenkins@suneidesis.com>]

On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> wrote:

> Robert Dewar writes:
>  > > See Algol 68 for what happens if you do it the other way...
>  >
>  > I am willing to bet that this comment is made with *ZERO* knowledge
>  > about Algol-68.
>
> Believe that if you wish.  I'm not a betting man.  The Algol 68
> language had no implementations when it was standardized -- AFAIK the
> first delivery was 1977!

Several errors of fact there:

First, the first published date on my copy of the Algol 68-R users Guide
says 1972. Royal Signals and Radar Establishment had versions running
before that.

Second, neither the original report Algol 68 nor the revised report Algol
68 were "standardized". They were and are still maintained by IFIP WG 2.1.
Never been near an International Standards Committee.

But by extension your suggestion that a lanaguge only succeeds because of
wide-spread implementations is clearly wrong. SGML had very few
implementations in the period up to its publication in 1986. Goldfarb's
ARC maybe and that didn't implement the entire standard. Even now CONCUR
isn't there within Clark's SP.

And if Algol-69 was such a beast why was it one of the candidate languages
for what we now know as Ada?

I suspect that the real reason Algol-68 did not catch on was that it was
primarily European in origin.

Regards, Trevor

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