On Feb 17, 2014, at 4:38 AM, Andreas Rossberg wrote:

> On 15 February 2014 21:06, Allen Wirfs-Brock <allen at wirfs-brock.com> wrote:
>> ...
>> But remember, prior to ES5, it was closer to Cobolish machine language.  No structured control, goto's targeting numeric step numbers, intermediate results referenced by step number (sorta  SSA with numeric ids), etc.
>> 
>> There has never been a complete redo, just incremental improvements and refactorings. But we've definitely advanced from the early 1950s to the late 1970s.
> 
> Well, Algol-60 already was more structured a language than our
> spec-speak. Let alone how far the Algol-68 spec was ahead of us. :)
> 

We were discussing the nature of the ES spec. pseudo code, not comparing pseudo code to a complete programming language.

Structured programming styles weren't widely adopted until the mid to late 1970's.

The Algol 60 Report used English prose to describe its semantics.  the ES specs are closer in style to the Algol 68 Report although less formal and arguably more approachable.

Allen

On Feb 17, 2014, at 4:38 AM, Andreas Rossberg wrote:

> Well, Algol-60 already was more structured a language than our
> spec-speak. Let alone how far the Algol-68 spec was ahead of us. :)

We were discussing the nature of the ES spec. pseudo code, not comparing pseudo code to a complete programming language.

Structured programming styles weren't widely adopted until the mid to late 1970's.

The Algol 60 Report used English prose to describe its semantics.  the ES specs are closer in style to the Algol 68 Report although less formal and arguably more approachable.