Jack, (01)
> Perhaps I am being too picky but I think Simula is
> a modeling language, not a programming language. (02)
The borderline is not sharp. You can take a declarative language
like Horn-clause logic or data flow diagrams, design a compiler
or interpreter for it, and you have a programming language. (03)
But Simula 67 was definitely designed and used as a programming
language. The primary reason why it didn't become popular is that
Oslo University, where it was designed and implemented, tried to
recoup their investment by selling it. (04)
I was at IBM at the time (1969), and I wanted to get a copy to try
it out. But the cost (in 1969 dollars) was $20K for commercial
companies. My manager said that if it was necessary for my job,
we could buy it. But I had to admit that my major interest was
to try it out and "kick the tires". (05)
A few years later, Niklaus Wirth designed and implemented
a much simpler language called Pascal. Instead of selling it,
he gave the compiler away to anybody that asked for it. Most
universities were looking for a successor to Algol 60, and
Algol 68 was too complex. So they got a copy of the Pascal
compiler and ported it to their favorite hardware. (06)
John (07)
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