Re: The History of the ALGOL Effort

On 14 Aug 2006 15:17:24 -0400, HT de Beer <H.T.de.Beer@gmail.com>
wrote:


>Dear reader,
>
>this month I have completed my Master thesis in Computer Science and
>Engineering about the history of the ALGOL effort. In this thesis I
>argue that the ALGOL effort was the catalyst to the transformation of
>the field of compiler writing from a craftsmanship into a science in
>the early 1960s. The history of the ALGOL effort is told, starting
>with the computational context of the 1950s when the ALGOL effort was
>initiated. Second, the development from IAL (ALGOL 58) to ALGOL 60 and
>the role the BNF played in this development are discussed. Third, the
>translation of ALGOL 60 and the establishment of the scientific field
>of translator writing are treated. Finally, the period of ALGOL 60
>maintenance and the subsequent period of creating a successor to ALGOL
>60 are described.


>People who are interested can download the thesis as a pdf file at
>http://www.heerdebeer.org/ALGOL/The_History_of_ALGOL.pdf (1.1
>megabytes) or read the summary at http://www.heerdebeer.org/ALGOL/ .


>I post this here because a) I think there may be people here
>interested in the early years of the field of compiler writing, and
>b) the more appropriate newsgroup, comp.lang.algol, appeared to be
>dead,


Maybe you should go to Wikipedia before writing your thesis and learn
a bit about TRUE history of Algol 60. Unfortunately, there are a lot
of omissions in your thesis, but the most significant is not
mentioning the KDF9 compiler known also as Whetstone compiler. This
was first complete implementation of Algol 60 based on priority
grammars and stack based virtual machine. Complete description of this
compiler was published as a book by Academic Press (Rendall, Russel
"Algol 60 Implementation"). This book contains complete description
and pseudocode of both the translator and virtual machine. To my best
knowledge, the role of this compiler was the same as the role of
Amman's P4 Pascal compiler published years later: it was possible to
purchase the book, code the algorithms presented here and get working
Algol compiler. This book was the starting point of many other Algol
compilers, and probably influenced the architecture of future Pascal
implementations.


It seems that Randall, Russell, KDF9 and Whetstone are missing in
Bibliography of your thesis. This is absolutely significant omission.


A.L>

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