Languages

ALGOL

AL-gol

Procedural Language

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "ALGOL." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/algol.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). ALGOL. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/algol

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-algol,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {ALGOL},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/algol},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) is a family of imperative programming languages developed in 1958 through international collaboration among European and American computer scientists. It introduced influential concepts including begin-end code blocks, nested functions with lexical scope, and a formal method for defining language syntax, and for decades served as the standard notation in which algorithms were published in academic literature.

Facts

First Released

1958 1

Paradigm

Procedural, imperative and structured; specified by an international committee rather than a single designer. 1

Significance

Introduced Backus-Naur Form for formal grammar specification and directly influenced the design of PL/I, Simula, Pascal, C and Scheme; served as the standard language for publishing algorithms in academic computer science literature. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections