Implementation of ALGOL 60 for the English Electric KDF9
F. G. Duncan · The Computer Journal · 1962
Our decision to implement ALGOL 60 for the KDF9 was taken about 18 months ago. We saw in ALGOL 60 the possibility of its use as an automatic programming language for a wide range of users, particularly those who had become accustomed to working with earlier languages. On the one hand, ALGOL 60 was quite obviously much more powerful than any of the others, and on the other hand we wanted to make a contribution towards the effort to establish a language that could be universally understood and implemented. From the first our ambition was to implement the ALGOL 60 Report (Naur, ed., 1960) as fully as we possibly could. Experience in writing and using an optimizing compiler for DEUCE (Duncan and Hawkins, 1959; Duncan and Huxtable, 1960) led to the desire to combine full ALGOL translation with the generation of efficient (or relatively fast-operating) object programs. We realized, of course, that this would entail considerable original work, and planned to put about five man-years into the project.