Editing ALGOL 60 (section)

{{Short description|Member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages}}
{{About|the programming language||Algol (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox programming language
| name = ALGOL 60
| paradigms = [[Procedural programming|procedural]], [[Imperative programming|imperative]], [[Structured programming|structured]]
| family = [[ALGOL]]
| designers = [[John Warner Backus|Backus]], [[Friedrich Ludwig Bauer|Bauer]], [[Julien Green (computer scientist)|Green]], [[Charles Katz|Katz]], [[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|McCarthy]], [[Peter Naur|Naur]], [[Alan Jay Perlis|Perlis]], [[Heinz Rutishauser|Rutishauser]], [[Klaus Samelson|Samelson]], [[Adriaan van Wijngaarden|van Wijngaarden]], [[Bernard Vauquois|Vauquois]], [[Joseph Henry Wegstein|Wegstein]], [[Michael Woodger|Woodger]]
| released = {{Start date and age|1960}}
| typing = [[Static type|Static]], [[Strong and weak typing|strong]]
| scope = [[Scope (computer science)|Lexical]]
| influenced by = [[ALGOL 58]]
| influenced = Most subsequent imperative languages (so-called ''ALGOL-like'' languages), e.g., [[PL/I]],  [[Simula]], [[Combined Programming Language|CPL]], [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], [[Ada (programming language)|Ada]], [[C (programming language)|C]]
}}
'''ALGOL 60''' (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the [[ALGOL]] family of computer [[programming language]]s. It followed on from [[ALGOL 58]] which had introduced [[Block (programming)|code blocks]] and the <code>begin</code> and <code>end</code> pairs for delimiting them, representing a key advance in the rise of [[structured programming]]. ALGOL 60 was one of the first languages implementing function definitions (that could be invoked recursively). ALGOL 60 function definitions could be [[nested function|nested]] within one another (which was first introduced by any programming language{{Clarify|date=December 2024}}), with [[lexical scope]]. It gave rise to many other languages, including [[CPL (programming language)|CPL]], [[PL/I]], [[Simula]], [[BCPL]], [[B (programming language)|B]], [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], and [[C (programming language)|C]]. Practically every computer of the era had a [[systems programming language]] based on ALGOL 60 concepts.

[[Niklaus Wirth]] based his own [[ALGOL W]] on ALGOL 60 before moving to develop [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]]. Algol-W was intended to be the next generation ALGOL but the [[ALGOL 68]] committee decided on a design that was more complex and advanced rather than a cleaned simplified ALGOL 60. The official ALGOL versions are named after the year they were first published. ALGOL 68 is substantially different from ALGOL 60 and was criticised partially for being so, so that in general "ALGOL" refers to dialects of ALGOL 60.