In some surprising news just a few hours into 2025, an Oracle engineer released a set of patches that implements the ALGOL68 programming language front-end for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). These patches are work-in-progress patches for niche programming languages ​​that are half a century old.

Last month, there was new patch activity for GCC's COBOL front-end patch. Many criticized it as outdated and anachronistic. Then, the ALGOL68 front-end patch is even more unexpected.

ALGOL68 is an imperative programming language that debuted in 1968. However, its use has always been relatively niche and its scope of use is very limited. Back in the early 2000s, there were GPL-licensed ALGOL68 compilers (a68g) and experimental GCC front-end patches released... Oracle's Jose Marchesi had developed an ALGOL68 experimental front-end patch, but I don't expect to see this work become mainline GCC in 2025.

Marchesi wrote on the GCC mailing list on New Year's Day:

"This WIP is a GCC front-end for Algol68, a fascinating, often under-understood and often-maligned programming language. It's no secret that Algol68 was ahead of its time when it came out, and anyone familiar with the language would suspect that this may still hold true today, but more than 50 years after the revision report was published , the world may finally be ready for it, or maybe not yet, we'll see ;) At the very least, GCC support will make it easier for Algol68 enthusiasts to write, share and use their programs on modern systems. It's a work in progress, but the front-end can already compile most major language constructs and many complete programs."

But not all ALGOL68 language features have been implemented. We want GNUAlgol68 to be the strict superlanguage reported by Algol68.

Some ALGOL68 code examples:

Those interested in the ALGOL68 programming language in 2025 can find patches being written on the GCC mailing list. We can continue to follow the progress and review of these patches and whether the ALGOL68 frontend will be accepted into the GCC mainline in 2025.