On Sat, Apr 08, 2023 at 10:23:15AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote: > My first language was Algol, a language that wrote out keywords and such so > that it was easier to understand (for me) what a given program was doing. It > was also structured (if that is the right word), having things like groups of > statements (within, iirc, begin / end statements) (something that, at the > time, iirc, Fortran (II) didn't have.
Yes, "structured programming" was the term used. Structured programming uses functions, while loops, if/then/else statements, and so on, instead of "GOTO 1230" type commands, to control a program's flow. One of the basic goals of structured programming languages was to eliminate reliance on line numbers -- which were the hallmark of many other languages in use at the time. Nowadays, we rarely think about this, because structured programming won its battle. All modern languages are built on this paradigm. Even the most primitive Unix Bourne shell (sh) has no GOTO command.
