[HECnet] Thrashing about...

On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 12:19 PM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: ?I agree - Algol60 might have been fairly easy compared to some other things, I suspect it was cost benefit, resources applied/ROI.? ? I'm not so sure of Algol? ?68. The impression I get from the languages folks is that Algol68 was becoming just not that interesting to 'enough' customers (Paul W's comment above about it being primarily just the Brits pushing DEC for it by then). Also, Algol (Algol60 if you will) and Algol68 are pretty different in scope. There were numerous Algol60 flavors for the -8 and -10, and as you say; they are no harder than Pascal. [As I recently noted elsewhere, there is slick multiuser Algol60 running on TSS/8 in 4K for simh/pdp-8]. The Pascal Report was created post Algol68 and in some ways was Wirth simplification of -68 which had caused great consternation in the languages community when the Algol-68 report was released. Pascal language definitely had a fast following and DEC marketing picked up on that invested and in it for the 32 and 36 bit systems [the 16 bit compiler was from OMSI/Oregon Software, not our friends in ZKO]. I suspect, by the time Pascal shows up DEC Marketing figured that the need for other languages (like PL/1, RPG and Cobol) was more important than Algol68 and the need for pure Algol60 was less and less for Vax since pretty much anyone using Algol60 by then had transitioned to Pascal - so the cost benefit/return favored Pascal and not Algol68. I personally can not say (But .. I'll ask if any of them remembers though). FWIW: The Stanford MainSAIL folks created a company did port the Stanford AI flavor of Algol to the Vax for both VMS and UNIX, plus to different 68000/UNIX systems of the mid-1980s and they brought some of the Algol-ish folks with them. I've seen that compiler kicking around the Internet also. Again, as I said, it is a good question for that group what they remember. ? ?