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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. Clear consensus to Keep this article. Liz Read! Talk! 02:28, 19 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Elliott ALGOL

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Elliott ALGOL (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Fails WP: GNG. I could not find sufficient sourcing to establish notability. HyperAccelerated (talk) 03:12, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Computing and Software. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:16, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. An internet search for 'Elliot Algol' turns up half a dozen or so references (excluding Wikipedia), including a working version on an Elliott 803 computer at The National Museum of Computing. Murray Langton (talk) 07:48, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Plus, there's an entire 1966 book on it. There's an awful lot that one could write based upon that one as yet unused source alone, and huge scope for expansion here. Uncle G (talk) 09:37, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wooldridge, Roylance; Ractliffe, John Fuller (1966). An Introduction to ALGOL Programming. Applied mathematics (2nd ed.). London: English Universities Press.
    • Do either of you have sources that show the subject meets WP: GNG? I don’t care how many WP: GOOGLEHITS the subject has, and the book seems to be about ALGOL generally, not this specific implementation, for which we already have an article. Saying that there’s an entire book about it is misleading at best and outrageously false at worst. HyperAccelerated (talk) 15:10, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • I just gave you an entire 250 page book on the subject, which you clearly have not even bothered to read any part of, since even reading just its preface (let alone, say, the title of chapter 4) tells you that it is specifically about Elliott ALGOL, noting where it differs from ALGOL60. The authors explicitly say so, as do contemporary book reviews for that matter. It is bad form to lazily not even read anything of a proffered source and then call what people who have read the book say "outrageously false". You are the one making false statements based upon zero effort whatsoever. You just earned one of my rare speedy keeps. Uncle G (talk) 01:44, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        I’ve added a response below. Please remember that you need not respond to every comment you disagree with; WP: BLUDGEON is in force. HyperAccelerated (talk) 06:07, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Elliott Algol was the first commercial Algol compiler, which is arguably the forerunner of 'C' and all other block structured programming languages in use today. It's highly significant in computing history. [1] Much historical information like this is known to people who were there, but pre-dates the WWW so won't be found in a Google search. Elliott itself is a very significant company in the development of commercial computing.

    Fjleonhardt (talk) 13:44, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I disagree that Elliott Algol was the first commercial Algol compiler - I believe that the first commercial implementation of an ALGOL compiler was by Burroughs Corporation (please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_Large_Systems). ALGOL was in fact a widely used language in the USA, courtesy of the widespread use of Burroughs large, medium and small systems. (I've got no reason to doubt any of the rest of the statements in this article). 60.242.32.210 (talk) 00:50, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/
  • Delete: lacking significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources, isn't currently taught in multiple academic institutions, and lacks third-party instruction manuals for the Elliott ALGOL compiler. A comment on the sources: Lavington's book (arguably the best secondary source in this article) seems to talk about it in a broader context to the "golden years" of Elliott Brothers, and the parts of the chapter that talk about Elliott ALGOL directly are derived from Hoare's lecture. Lavington's book is therefore (in my opinion) not significant. The rest of the Google search results are just manuals written by Hoare, reports on the ALGOL 60 language or non-reliable sources. Fails WP:NSOFT. MiasmaEternal☎ 01:03, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep. Zero effort nomination by a lazy nominator who is not bothering to research things, nor even reading sources when proffered. Even the sources in the article at the time of nomination are not just mere mentions. The Lavington book covers Brian Randell on the subject, for example, as well as reporting what Hoare xyrself once said. Ractliffe returned to the subject in xyr later 1971 book on ALGOL. Brian A. Wichmann addressed the 4100 series compiler in xyr 1973 ALGOL book. Uncle G (talk) 01:44, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, generally when you throw a 250 page book at a volunteer and say “significant coverage is here, just trust me bro”, people will usually not go and read all 250 pages of the book. This truth is never a free pass to call someone “lazy” or their nomination “zero effort”. This is how life works.
    Anyway, the phrase “Elliott ALGOL” only appears three times in the book you mentioned above. For Chapter 4, I don’t even believe it appears outside of the chapter title. The other book (the one already in the article) only mentions Elliott ALGOL a few times; it talks about the broader subject of ALGOL, it talks about the Elliott brothers, but it does not address the subject directly except for a sentence or two in passing.
    Speedy keep doesn’t apply here: there is a coherent rationale. It just happens to be one that you disagree with. If this isn’t clear, I suggest reading WP: SK. Thank you. HyperAccelerated (talk) 06:24, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Have you read the contents of chapter 4 or even just 8.5.3 of the Springer book? SK3 requires you to state why the sourcing is not sufficient. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:26, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "Zero effort nomination by a lazy nominator who is not bothering to research things, nor even reading sources when proffered."
    100% agree with that assessment. It seems that HyperAccelerated is going around nominating things for deletion that he does not know about, so they must be irrelevant and only using a single criterion of WP:GNG.
    These articles are relevant, at least to the history of the industry and influence on later development.
    From what I have seen of HyperAccelerated (whoever he or she is), this is an act of vandalism against Wikipedia and those who have expended effort to write these articles.
    It could be that HA wants to make a simplistic view of history based on their limited understanding. Ian.joyner (talk) 06:41, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge into Elliott 803.--cyclopiaspeak! 16:21, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The Elliot 803 article is already long enough. Besides Elliot ALGOL was defined and developed beyond the 803. It was also an influential language beyond that machine. Ian.joyner (talk) 06:37, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per sources below by Adam Sampson.--cyclopiaspeak! 10:38, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This was an widely-used early implementation of Algol, especially in the UK and Commonwealth, so it's discussed explicitly in contemporary books about the language. Elementary Programming and Algol (Nicol, 1965) has about 20 descriptions of Elliott-specific features throughout the book (which might be useful as a source for expanding the article). Basic Algol (Broderick and Barker, 1967) is written for the Elliott 903 version, and similarly highlights Elliott-specific features and limitations. Computers in Architectural Design (Campion, 1968) has a chapter about Elliott Algol with quite a bit of detail about how you compile programs and provide data for them in practice (again, maybe a useful source). ALGOL 60 compilation and assessment (Wichmann, 1973) has critical comments about limitations of Elliott Algol in several sections. Collected Algorithms from CACM (covering 1960-1963) gives evidence of how widely used it was, and several of the writeups describe Elliott features or problems explicitly. That's all from the first page of results on archive.org, so I expect a hunt in a university library would find more along the same lines. Adam Sampson (talk) 17:41, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per above. I strongly doubt the nominator's abilities to read the cited books in the five minutes after nominating ALGOL X (though I agree that ALGOL X should be removed). Aaron Liu (talk) 17:52, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep based on the sources dug up by Adam Sampson, Uncle G et al. Reading the author blurbs for each of those books, they all seem independent from Elliott. DigitalIceAge (talk) 18:31, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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