# Algol 68

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Algol 68 and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for its fully bracketed syntax and ideas ahead of its time, and now easy to try through GCC. Critics say it is too complex to implement and its report is hard to build from.

## Why people recommend it

- Fully bracketed syntax (3 comments): "A better syntax was introduced by ALGOL 68, which is frequently referred to as "fully bracketed syntax"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806451)) "a good syntax is of the kind usually called "fully bracketed", as popularized by ALGOL 68" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444691)) "A nice feature of ALGOL 68 that was new at that time was the fully bracketed syntax" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368714))
- Advanced ideas for its time (3 comments): "The language itself is actually surprisingly nice for its time, very orthogonal and composable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020551)) "A number of mind-boggling ideas (for the time), complexity, an array of kitchen sinks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020539)) "some of them were actually better in ALGOL 68 than in later languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367745))
- Better than Pascal and ALGOL W (2 comments): "ALGOL 68 was much better than the ALGOL W proposed by Wirth, or than its successor, Pascal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366647)) "languages like ALGOL 68 and Xerox Mesa, which were languages far superior to Pascal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804603))

## What people warn about

- Too complex to implement (3 comments): "it was simply too complex to fully implement in a compiler given the limited hardware resources" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367349)) "A number of mind-boggling ideas (for the time), complexity, an array of kitchen sinks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46020539)) "too big and complicated for Unix" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915591))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend
- [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend
- [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend
- [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend
- [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Algol 68", https://hackerapproved.com/p/algol-68/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).