Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support

In article 18-04-002, Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> wrote:
>On 30/03/18 15:20, Anton Ertl wrote:
>>> The theory is that "the attitude of the Algol 60 designers towards
>>> language design is what led to these innovations appearing".
>>> Clearly, this "attitude" was present before, during and after
>>> the development of Algol 60.
>> Ok, so this theory cannot even be verified of falsified for the
>> features that came before Algol 60.
>
>John asked us to speculate what might have happened differently,
>not produce empirically verifiable theories :-)
>
>I came across this quote the other day, which suggests that the change
>in attitude had already started by 1979:
>
>"The call-by-name mechanism is so expensive that modern languages
>have mostly dropped it in favour of the semantically different,
>but operationally more efficient, call-by-reference"
>--"Understanding and Writing Compilers", Richard Bornat, Macmillan 1979.


Earlier.
Algol 68 already moved to call by reference.


I paraphrase from page 182 183 Informal introduction to Algol68
(Lindsey / van der Meulen)
"
Algol 60 had something called Jensen's devise, using (or misusing)
call-by-name. In algol 68 we use references only.
"
Then they give an example of how the effect of call-by-name of e.g. a
real can be had by using a procedure that returns a a real.


Basically a call-by-name is a procedure where the input
parameters are obsured, as viewed from the algol 68 perspective.


Groetjes Albert
--
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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