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. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
First Released First Released ParadigmProcedural, imperative and structured; specified by an international committee rather than a single designer. 1 SignificanceIntroduced 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 Classification
Typing Discipline Typing Discipline FAQs
Where and when was ALGOL first specified?
A 1958 meeting in Zurich.
ALGOL was specified by European and American computer scientists in a meeting in 1958 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. That first version is known as ALGOL 58.
Connections
Follows Typing Discipline
In Field
Source Wikipedia: ALGOL
Influenced
NELIAC (Navy Electronics Laboratory International ALGOL Compiler) is a dialect of ALGOL 58.
Source Wikipedia: Pascal (programming language)
Source Wikipedia: Scheme (programming language)
Influenced By
Invented By
Predecessor Of
ALGOL 68 "was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 language." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_68
General knowledge, not independently re-fetched: Niklaus Wirth and C.A.R. Hoare designed ALGOL W (1966) as a proposed evolutionary successor to ALGOL 60, before the ALGOL 68 committee took a more radical direction.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: ALGOL
Wikimedia FoundationLegacy section
Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors.
Infobox: designers
Bauer, Bottenbruch, Rutishauser, Samelson, Backus, Katz, Perlis, Wegstein, Naur, Vauquois, van Wijngaarden, Woodger, Green, McCarthy
Infobox: released
1958
Lead section
ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958.
Infobox: typing
Static, strong
- In Field: Programming Language Theory
View the Source 2. Wikidata: ALGOL
- Wikidata Q188436, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
- Wikidata Q188436 P571 (inception)
View the SourceWikipedia: Pascal (programming language)
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: Pascal, Lead paragraph, on ALGOL 60 patternView the Source Wikipedia: Scheme (programming language)
Wikimedia FoundationInfluenced: Scheme, Lexical scopeQuote, Influenced: Scheme, Lexical scope
The impetus to incorporate lexical scoping, which was an unusual scoping model in the early 1970s, into their new version of Lisp, came from Sussman's studies of ALGOL.
Wikidata: Icon
Wikidata: Mesa
Wikidata: PL/M
Wikidata: SETL
Programming Language Database (PLDB): ALGOL - PLDB
Programming Language Database (PLDB)In Group: Early High-Level Languages and Coding Systems, Page textQuote, In Group: Early High-Level Languages and Coding Systems, Page text
ALGOL (short for Algorithmic Language) is a family of imperative computer programming languages, originally developed in the mid-1950s
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