Where does this come from, and can I check it?

The 1960 report introduced begin and end blocks plus a formal grammar notation that is still in use. The figure is taken from Computer History Museum, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a technology fact?

Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

ALGOL 60 gave programming its block structure

The 1960 report introduced begin and end blocks plus a formal grammar notation that is still in use ALGOL 60 came from an international committee that included John Backus and Peter Naur, and it replaced flowcharts with nested statements and recursive procedures. Its syntax was written down in Backus-Naur Form, which became the standard way to define a language. Few machines ran ALGOL well, yet nearly every later language inherited its shape. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Computer History Museum

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Smalltalk made every value an object receiving messagesAlan Kay's group at Xerox PARC built a language where computation happens by passing messages between objects Pascal was designed to teach programming properlyNiklaus Wirth's 1970 language forced structured code and became a standard teaching tool in the 1980s Java runs on a virtual machine, not directlyCompilers turn Java into bytecode that any machine with a Java virtual machine can execute unchanged JavaScript was written in about ten daysBrendan Eich produced the first version at Netscape in 1995, and the name was a marketing decision Python is named after a comedy troupeGuido van Rossum took the name from Monty Python in 1989 rather than from the snake BASIC was invented so students could use a computerKemeny and Kurtz created it at Dartmouth in 1964 so a beginner could write a working program in an afternoon

Tags: programming-languages, algol, syntax

ALGOL 60 gave programming its block structure: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: The 1960 report introduced begin and end blocks plus a formal grammar notation that is still in use. The figure is taken from Computer History Museum, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?: Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.