Basic Facilities

It is as well to begin the discussion of Algol 60 and Fortran by clearing out of the way some notational and other (apparently) superficial differences between the languages. Expert programmers tend to take such things in their stride, and occasionally when languages are compared they are regarded as trivial and unimportant. However, there are a number of reasons why they should not be dismissed too lightly. The expert programmer familiar with the basic concepts of programming can give more of his mind to mastering unfamiliar ways of expressing or using those concepts in a new language than can a newcomer who is still struggling to master the concepts themselves; to the inexperienced programmer questions of notation are very important, and some who have programmed extensively, but in one language only, often associate the notation and the underlying concepts so closely in their minds that they find notational differences very confusing and are often irritated and even offended by them. Then, notation can affect the implementation and use of the language. Perhaps most interestingly from our point of view, choice of notation can have consequences for the structure of a language, and it can shed some light on the approach and attitudes of its designers.