From meissner@lynx.cs.usfca.edu Mon Oct 25 07:43:23 1993
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Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 14:43:23 -0700
From: meissner@lynx.cs.usfca.edu (Loren P. Meissner)
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To: Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz-muenchen.de, SC22WG5@dkuug.dk
Subject: Re:  (SC22WG5.452) RE: Just Honour for Fortran Developer, John Backus - Lest We Forget
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Of course Backus was deeply involved in Algol 60 as well
as Fortran. (the B in BNF is Backus, after all.)

My conjecture as to why Algol 60 was not more successful
is mainly (1) the i/o was undefined (but later defined in
a supplement, much too late) and (2) nobody understood
recursion in those days.

On the other hand, if (2) was a major factor, why didn't
the B-5000 succeed with Algol-60?

SHARE, the main IBM user group of the time, tried to
get an Algol-60 adopted. Does anyone remember why that
did not work?

Anyway, it seems the first really successful (in its way)
"Algol-like language" was Pascal.

-Loren Meissenr
-Loren Meissner (I think I have a slow "r" key)