
I think (Algol) is richer, clearer and more expressive (than Go) - fogus
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2009-11/msg00576.html
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gruseom
Interesting piece. Among other things, the origin of Common Lisp's infamous,
love-it-or-hate-it LOOP macro is unmistakable here:

    
    
      # loop in 'for' mode
      for i from 1 to 10 do print(i) od
      # ...and in 'while' mode
      while i < 10 do print(i); i := i + 1; od
      # ...and in both!
      for i from 1 to 10 while checkWhetherCancelled() do print(i) od
      # ...just loop, no counter!
      to 10 do print("Ten times!") od
    

Personally, I love LOOP; it's just so damn flexible and intuitive, even if
there is something a little illicit about it. But no question it's as un-Lispy
as you can get. How fitting that it turns out to have been embedded Algol all
along.

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gcv
While I don't speak Algol-68, I find the arguments interesting and
enlightening... except for this bit: "state-of-the-art in programming
languages hasn't moved much in those 41 years." While this is true to some
extent, as mainstream dynamically typed languages pick up features from Lisp,
I'd say that Haskell has a lot of new ideas. (I haven't yet figured out if
those ideas help write better software, but that's more my failing than
Haskell's.)

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j_baker
Let me say this... there's a reason why ALGOL 68 is no longer used very much.
At the time it was criticized for being horrendously complex, and there is
some truth to this.

Notice that the email points out all the different things you _can_ do with
ALGOL 68 compared to Go. If we were to compare all programming languages this
way, wouldn't C++ be the best language ever?

~~~
bad_user
No, C++ lacks many things ... that's why I personally hate it ... the cost you
pay for the feature creep is not worth it.

A good language is not a revolutionary one, indeed, but it's kind of
depressing that the state of the art is the same as 30-40 years ago, and it
sometimes seems that language-designers haven't learned anything.

There's nothing I hate more about a programming language than exceptions to
rules. And Go has plenty of those. I understand the pragmatism, but if some
people are unhappy with C++ or Java, why make the same mistakes when designing
a new one?

~~~
j_baker
"A good language is not a revolutionary one, indeed, but it's kind of
depressing that the state of the art is the same as 30-40 years ago, and it
sometimes seems that language-designers haven't learned anything."

I think it's just a sign that computer science is a maturing field. After all,
I don't hear civil engineers complaining that the fundamental concepts of
building a bridge haven't changed much in the last ~2000 years.

~~~
kraemate
Yeah, i dont hear people blaming civil engineers because all the bridges that
they build collapse spontaneously or which need to be replaced every 6 months
or which work only with 5 wheel cars. 'Computer Science' is going backwards
fast, and we all know it.

~~~
ramchip
Backwards? Come on. Write a Parsec-based parser, build a GUI with Qt, make a
web app with Rails or Clojure or whatever you like - then compare your
experience to what it would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

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andreyf
This is silly. ALGOL did not have a garbage collector. Nor did it support
threads as well as Go does. Nor did it have interfaces. I'd go on, but
comparing Go to ALGOL 68 just isn't anything close to serious.

~~~
ggruschow
Maybe the features he highlighted are as important to some people as the
features you highlight.

~~~
j_baker
You mean programmers in 1968? Of course.

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pbh
While the web seems to be alight with comparisons of Go to other languages
(Python, Lisp, ...), what seems to make this post unique is the comparison of
Go to a forty year old language in little common use today.

To me at least, this begs a question---where do the great trolls of the
Internet go to brag about their exploits? I remember in the golden age of
Slashdot one could read "TrollTalk" and see links to the best posts with the
most comments trying to misguidedly correct the original troll, most mod
points up or down, and so on. (I think it even had a scoring system and a
best-of newsletter of sorts.) Where do the great trolls of today hang out and
brag about their exploits?

I don't mean just the sort of mediocre trolls who might compare Go to Visual
Basic or something, but the sort of highly specialised trolls who might start
a fire storm by comparing it to Algol-68. Where does one look to find the
Orson Welles of modern technology trolls? Has blogging killed the once fine
art of trolling?

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chipdude
I had no idea how much of today's code carries ALGOL DNA.

~~~
j_baker
ALGOL _invented_ most of the things you see in today's code. Loops,
subroutines, and I believe dynamic allocation all came from ALGOL.

And the reality is that these things haven't really changed much. Most of the
changes that modern languages bring are in the way of directives to the
compiler/interpreter.

~~~
gruseom
_Loops, subroutines, and I believe dynamic allocation all came from ALGOL._

The initial release of Fortran had loops and subroutines. But I don't think
even they invented those things.

I'm not sure about dynamic allocation.

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xtho
Maybe it's just me but I personally find it funny, this was posted to the lua-
users mailing list.

~~~
whye
What's funny about it?

~~~
joe_the_user
Perhaps because lua is obscure and aims to be innovative? I.E, pretty similar
to Go.

