Apropos of nothing, here’s a really nice short video by Professor David Brailsford of The University of Nottingham about the days when Algol 68 and Pascal were in contention for the language to be taught in various computer courses. Some of those courses were for hardcore Computer Science students and others were for people in other disciplines who needed some computer and programming knowledge.
It’s hard to appreciate from today’s world of multiple industrial strength compilers for every language imaginable but in those days the decisions tended to be made on pragmatic grounds. In particular, Brailsford and his colleagues were concerned that whatever language they chose it should have a competent compiler with good diagnostics. Because this was all taking place in Nottingham in the UK, the situation was further complicated by the type of hardware that was available due to budget concerns.
In the end, they chose Algol 68 for the Computer Science students and Pascal for the others. Neither language has much of a mindshare today. The story that Brailsford tells takes place in the late sixties to the early seventies so Unix and C were on the horizon and would soon be recognized as the proper solution.
The video is only 10 minutes, 12 seconds long so it should be easy to find time for it. You won’t learn anything actionable from it but it’s a really interesting peek back to the early days that only a few still have first hand memory of. Those memories should not be lost so I urge you to take a look.