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Algol-68 seemed like a good idea - until it wasn't

The 1960s saw rapid growth in programming languages, which was both
good and bad. The first (commercial) languages appeared in the late
1950s, in the guise of Fortran, and Cobol, which were very
successful. Work on Algol started in 1958, it was to be a scientific
programming language, providing features that Fortran just didn't,
e.g. better structured control, in a package that had roughly the
same scope as Fortran, i.e. numerical computation. Algol-58 didn't
really get too far, with emphasis shifting to Algol-60 first
implemented by 1960. Algol-60 had a lot going for it, but it
seemingly wasn't enough for the group that produced the 1962 revision
of Algol-60. Working Group 2.1 of IFIP wanted a more universal
language, one whose scope could include areas covered by Cobol and
Lisp, and so they set about extending the language into Algol-X, what
would become Algol-68. But Algol-68 wasn't really a new version of
Algol, it was a whole new language. A very complex, and intriguing
language, perhaps ahead of its time, perhaps too obscure.

    The best we could do was to send with it a minority report,
    stating our considered view that, " . . . as a tool for the
    reliable creation of sophisticated programs, the language was a
    failure."

    C.A.R. Hoare, The Emperor's Old Clothes (CACM , 1981)

In December 1968 the working group adopted the proposal by Dutch
computer scientist Adriaan van Wijngaarden. But the draft proposal
for Algol-68 was opposed by some members of the committee. In the
Revised Report of the Algorithmic Language ALGOL-68 (ALGOL Bulletin),
the authors acknowledged the "wholehearted cooperation, support,
interest, criticism and violent objections from members of WG 2.1'',
which may sum up how committee members really felt. Both Hoare and
Dijkstra were critical about abandoning the simplicity of Algol-60,
the new language becoming a vehicle for complex ideas. That was only
half of it - even after being specified it seems that it was a hard
language for which to implement a compiler. Algol-68 was a language
written for programmers (albeit academic programmers), not for
compiler writers.

In the 1960s a lot of effort was put into the formal definition of
languages, with little effort put into creating languages that could
be used in a practical manner, or for teaching programming. It seems
like many in the fledgling CS community wanted to build languages
based on academic ideals, rather than anything useful. Niklaus Wirth
was a long time subscriber of the quest to build ALGOL-68, but
realized its shortcomings early on. He considered the working group
too rigid and ineffective, and not open to suggestions from others.
Wirth alluded to an alternative, but "It would have required the
renunciation of the immodest ambition to erect another monument or
mile stone along the road of progress in computer sciences. It would
have required a shift from a fanatic perfectionism in formal
definition methods towards honest consideration of pragmatics.".
Wirth and Hoare would spin off their draft proposal for Algol-X into
Algol-W, a simple extension of Algol-60 which would ultimately form
the basis of Pascal.

    "Wirth recognized Algol 68 for what it was, a catastrophe."

    Bertrand Meyer, "Niklaus Wirth, or the Importance of Being Simple
    ", CACM (Jan.9, 2024)

The first Algol-68 compiler appeared in 1970, Algol-68R (initially
written in Algol-60), implemented by the Royal Radar Establishment
(UK). But it was based on a subset of the original language, with
modifications such as loops not ending with OD. It seems to have been
popular in the UK, used for teaching programming in the 1970s. While
there were other implementations, the language didn't really make
inroads into the programming community. Arguably Wirth's Algol-W was
a better successor to Algol-60. The committee did spend a number of
years trying to refine Algol-68, however Hoare recollecting the
development of Algol-68 in The Emperor's Old Clothes, still felt that
the improvements were too conservative, "... in my view it does not
remove the basic technical flaws in the design, nor does it begin to
address the problem of its overwhelming complexity."

The Algol family of languages was firmly rooted in the academic
community, and arguably did not have the same connections to industry
as the likes of Fortran and Cobol. Industry did not adopt Algol-68,
IBM did not support it (it was arguably the largest manufacturer of
mainframes in the 1960s, into the 70s). Algol-68 also had to compete
against languages with a smaller language footprint, such as Pascal
and C. In reality there has never really been a universal programming
language, it is likely a fallacy of academia. Algol-68 was not a
success, not as a commercial language, and not as a teaching
language. Part of the problem with Algol-68 may have stemmed from
having "too many cooks in the kitchen", at a time when programming
language design was still a fledgling craft (IFIP Working Group 2.1
supposedly had about 28 members).

Algol-68 (or derivatives of) did rise to some prominence in one place
- the USSR. The most prominent implementation of the language came
from Leningrad State University. It was apparently used to design
Russian telephone exchanges.

Further reading:

  * Languages in Perspective: The Algol "family"
  * Why Algol bested Fortran (for a bit)
  * Ghosts in the machine: Algol 60
  * Why Algol 68 was weird (and ultimately failed)
  * A brief look at the utter madness of Algol 68
  * The Swiss Army Knife Syndrome and ALGOL 68

  * Algol 68 implementations and dialects
  * Algol 68 Genie (compiler)
  * Exploring Algol 68 in the 21st century
  * Algol 68 - 25 Years in the USSR

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