Path: csiph.com!xmission!news.snarked.org!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: w.clodius@icloud.com (William Clodius) Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Add nested-function support in a language the based on a stack-machine Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 21:09:30 -0600 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 24 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <18-03-049@comp.compilers> References: <6effed5e-6c90-f5f4-0c80-a03c61fd2127@gkc.org.uk> <18-03-042@comp.compilers> Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="59360"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: algol60, design Posted-Date: 13 Mar 2018 15:33:22 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:1996 Martin Ward wrote: > > So to answer your hypothetical question: how would programming language > be different if the designers of Algol 60 had decided to put > implementation convenience above mathematical simplicity > and expressive power in the language? Well, perhaps compiler > research would have stagnated from the beginning and we would not even > have some of the powerful language features we have now: > such as first order functions, closures, abstract data types and so on. Didn't Lisp have first order functions and closures in 58? If I remembe the discussion of APT in the HOPL I conference proceedings correctly it surprisingly had the equivalent of structs. > > (In case you haven't noticed, I am trying to be provocative, > and hoping to be proved wrong: especially about the stagnation > in language design!) However the other members of the committee were in a better position to know their own minds than Perlis was, and the the first HOPL conference, in the discussion of Naur's presentation, some of them claimed to have understood the implications of call by name from the beginning.