Editing ALGOL (section)

==History==
ALGOL was developed jointly by a committee of European and American computer scientists in a meeting in 1958 at the [[ETH Zurich|Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich]] (cf. [[ALGOL 58]]).<ref>{{Cite web |title=History of ALGOL — Software Preservation Group |url=https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/ |access-date=2024-03-14 |website=www.softwarepreservation.org}}</ref> It specified three different syntaxes: a reference syntax, a publication syntax, and an implementation syntax, syntaxes that permitted it to use different keyword names and conventions for decimal points (commas vs periods) for different languages.<ref name=":0" />

ALGOL was used mostly by research computer scientists in the United States and in Europe; commercial applications were hindered by the absence of standard [[input/output]] facilities in its description, and the lack of interest in the language by large computer vendors (other than [[Burroughs Corporation]]).<ref name=":1" /> ALGOL 60 did however become the standard for the publication of algorithms and had a profound effect on future language development.<ref name=":1" />

[[File:Algol&Fortran family-by-Borkowski.svg|thumb|alt=caption|Family tree of the Algol, [[Fortran]] and [[COBOL]] programming language dynasty]]

[[John Backus]] developed the ''Backus normal form'' method of describing programming languages specifically for ALGOL 58. It was revised and expanded by [[Peter Naur]] for ALGOL 60, and at [[Donald Knuth]]'s suggestion renamed [[Backus–Naur form]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Knuth |first=Donald E. |year=1964 |title=Backus Normal Form vs Backus Naur Form |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=7 |issue=12 |pages=735–736 |doi=10.1145/355588.365140|s2cid=47537431 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

Peter Naur: "As editor of the [[ALGOL Bulletin]] I was drawn into the international discussions of the language and was selected to be member of the European language design group in November 1959. In this capacity I was the editor of the ALGOL 60 report, produced as the result of the ALGOL 60 meeting in Paris in January 1960."<ref name="naur_acm">[http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1024454&srt=all&aw=140&ao=AMTURING&yr=2005 ACM Award Citation: Peter Naur] {{webarchive|url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20120402220529/http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/naur_1024454.cfm |date=2 April 2012}}, 2005</ref>

The following people attended the meeting in Paris (from 11 to 16 January):<ref name=":0" />
* [[Friedrich Ludwig Bauer]], [[Peter Naur]], [[Heinz Rutishauser]], [[Klaus Samelson]], [[Bernard Vauquois]], [[Adriaan van Wijngaarden]], and [[Michael Woodger]] (from Europe)
* [[John Warner Backus]], [[Julien Green (computer scientist)|Julien Green]], [[Charles Katz]], [[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|John McCarthy]], [[Alan Jay Perlis]], and [[Joseph Henry Wegstein]] (from the US).
Alan Perlis gave a vivid description of the meeting: "The meetings were exhausting, interminable, and exhilarating. One became aggravated when one's good ideas were discarded along with the bad ones of others. Nevertheless, diligence persisted during the entire period. The chemistry of the 13 was excellent."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Perlis |first=Alan J |chapter=The American side of the development of ALGOL |date=1978 |title=History of programming languages |chapter-url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800025.1198352 |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Computing_Machinery |pages=75–91 |doi=10.1145/800025.1198352 |isbn=0-12-745040-8 |via=dl.acm.org}}</ref>

===Legacy===
A significant contribution of the ALGOL 58 Report was to provide standard terms for programming concepts: statement, declaration, type, label, primary, block, and others.<ref name=":1">{{cite web |last1=Bemer |first1=Bob |title=A Politico-Social History of Algol |url=https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/paper/Bemer-Politico_Social_History_of_Algol.pdf |website=Computer History Museum |access-date=August 9, 2024}}</ref>

ALGOL 60 inspired many languages that followed it. [[Tony Hoare]] remarked: "Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors."<ref>[http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~bchandra/courses/papers/Hoare_Hints.pdf "Hints on Programming Language Design"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090915033339/http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~bchandra/courses/papers/Hoare_Hints.pdf |date=15 September 2009}}, C.A.R. Hoare, December 1973. Page 27. (This statement is sometimes erroneously attributed to [[Edsger W. Dijkstra]], also involved in implementing the first ALGOL 60 [[compiler]].)</ref> The [[Scheme (programming language)|Scheme]] programming language, a variant of [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] that adopted the block structure and lexical scope of ALGOL, also adopted the wording "Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme" for its standards documents in homage to ALGOL.<ref name="r3rs">{{cite web |editor-last=Rees |editor-first=Jonathan |editor2-last=Clinger |editor2-first=William |editor3-last=Abelson |editor3-first=Hal |editor3-link=Hal Abelson |last=Dybvig |first=R. K. |title=Revised(3) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme, (Dedicated to the Memory of ALGOL 60) |url=http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r3rs-html/r3rs_toc.html |access-date=20 October 2009 | display-authors=etal |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100114060759/http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/scheme-reports/r3rs-html/r3rs_toc.html |archive-date=14 January 2010 | df=dmy-all}}</ref>