It is very probable that he only liked ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60, for which he (and Jaap Zonneveld) made the first compiler (for the Electrologica X1), in an old school building in a small street, the Boerhaavestraat in Amsterdam, which I can see from my window across the river right now. The building does not have any marking, which is a bit of a shame.
We know what happened with ALGOL 68, and see also Edsger’s opinion on the document describing it: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/EWD230.html best regards, René. > On 28 Mar 2023, at 07:26, Tony Harminc <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, 27 Mar 2023 at 23:22, David Crayford <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> I think it was flippant Edsger W. Dijkstra quote: >> >> “The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, >> therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” > > Dijkstra wasn't hot on a lot of languages: > > "If Fortran has been called an infantile disorder, PL/I must be > classified as a fatal disease." > -Edsger Dijkstra in Introduction to the Art of Computer Programming > > Which prompted, or at least provided a juicy quote for, Ric Holt's > 1972 paper "Teaching the Fatal Disease (or) Introductory Computer > Programming Using PL/I". > >> I use programming languages that I don't like all the time. C, in >> particular, I dislike a lot. That doesn't mean they're not useful. > > Whew! And I thought you were a C fanatic. Thanks for disabusing me of that. > > Tony H. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
