Greetings and introductions

[chris hermansen]

As a long-time fan of Algol 68, and having written a bit of "real code" in
that language, I struggle to express how delighted I am to see all the
amazing work being put into GNU Algol 68.  A heartfelt thank you to all
involved.

I am no kind of expert in writing compilers (especially GNU cc based
compilers).  I have made my living over the last 40+ years writing mostly
data analysis programs in languages including FORTRAN, Pascal, C, AWK,
Java, Groovy, Python, R and Julia.  I have built a number of data-forward
web sites in Grails.  Over the last 10 years, I have written about
programming for a generalist open source audience, primarily on
https://www.opensource.com, and a bit on https://www.opensource.net and
https://www.both.org.

After using Algol 68C in my undergraduate years in the latter half of the
1970s, I haven't done much more with it than wish that I had a decent Algol
68 compiler since then, until I stumbled on Marcel's wonderful Algol68g a
few years ago.  Since that time, I have written many insignificant programs
to recover my knowledge and at one point built a first version of a hash
table capability based on split-ordered lists(1) in Algol68g, which at
least works, but needs some cleaning up.

As a great fan of Java, I would love to see Algol 68 evolve a little bit in
the direction of being object-oriented; thinking specifically of STRUCTs
that could refer to "self", simple / single inheritance, MODE templates,
interfaces.  From my perspective, that would require some very careful
thinking and design work and being willing to draw a boundary much closer
to Algol 68 classic and much further away from C++.  I might be in the
minority but I would see this extension being much more useful than
implementing transput in all its "glory".

But nevertheless, having two great mostly standard Algol 68 implementations
is an unimaginable richness!

As to this GNU Algol 68 project, I am excited to try out the compiler as it
develops.  I'm happy to contribute in the way of testing (of course
contributing any code that might be useful) and writing.  And of course to
cheer you all on!

And thanks again, with great hopes for success!
--
(1) SHALEV, O. and SHAVIT, N. 2006. Split-Ordered Lists: Lock-Free
Extensible Hash Tables. Journal of the ACM, Vol. 53, No. 3. ACM, New York.

-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.
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