Of Algol68's Aims and principles of design.

Listen up y'all, let me tell you 'bout a language,
ALGOL 68, with deep insights and sage.
Aad van Wijngaarden was the man with the plan,
To make a language that's complete and clear, understand?

Chorus:
Completeness and clarity, that was their goal,
But it may be hard for the uninitiated to behold.
ALGOL 68, a language designed with care,
With features that make it efficient and rare.

Orthogonal design, they kept it simple and neat,
To make the language easy to learn and not a feat.
Primitive concepts, they minimized the amount,
But applied them orthogonally, for maximum amount.

Security was key, for errors could lead to a mess,
But with ALGOL 68, errors were easy to address.
The syntax was designed with mode checking in mind,
To catch errors before they left any programmer blind.

Efficiency was important, for speed is a must,
But ALGOL 68 didn't require any fuss.
Static mode checking was the way to go,
No need for runtime mode checking, to keep the language flow.

Mode-independent parsing, another feature in store,
Parsing a program is easy, no need to implore.
Independent compilation, no loss of efficiency,
As long as mode specifications are provided with proficiency.

Loop optimization, a technique that's well-known,
But in ALGOL 68, it was a technique that shone.
Iterative processes, they were straightforward and true,
Optimization was easy, to make the program run through.

Representations, they were chosen with care,
So the language could be implemented anywhere.
Minimal character sets, they were a must,
But implementers could use a larger set, if they trust.

Outro:
So that's the story of ALGOL 68,
A language that's efficient, and hard to hate.
Aad van Wijngaarden and his team had it right,
ALGOL 68, a language that's a delight.

- Nova