The development of procedural programming languages personal contributions and perspectives

Abstract

I became involved in the design of a successor of Algol 60 in the years 1962-67. The result was Algol-W (66), and later the Algol-style Pascal (70), Modula-2 (79), and Oberon (88). In turn, they introduced the concepts of data structuring and typing, modular decomposition and separate compilation, and object-orientation. In this talk, we summarize these developments and recount some of the influences and events that determined the design and implementation of these languages. In the early 60s, CS was much influenced and concentrated around program-ming languages. Various programming paradigms emerged; we focus on the procedural branch, directed toward system programming and forming the backbone of engineering and data processing methods and tools. I conclude with some remarks about how the gap between methods taught and methods practiced in software design might be narrowed.