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ALGOL 60 Dead

ALGOL 60
KindProgramming language
Appeared1960
Ended1980
StatusDead
CreatorInternational committee (Backus, Naur, van Wijngaarden et al)
FamilyALGOL
Sourcewww.masswerk.at ↗

The most influential dead language ever — introduced block structure, lexical scope, and BNF grammar; the ancestor of C, Pascal, Ada, and nearly everything else on this map.

Created by John Backus
Descendants ALGOL W Coral 66 Simula ALGOL 68
Influenced CPL PL/I
Predecessors ALGOL 58

ALGOL 60 — the 1960 report — gave computing its first formal grammar (BNF), lexical scoping, nested functions, call-by-name/value, and the structured-programming skeleton every procedural language inherited.\n\nHoare later called it 'such a good language that it was a significant improvement on almost all of its successors' — the field's standing verdict.

→ Read the full article on the ALB Wiki

Sources

  1. masswerk.at/algol60/report.htm
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_60