PS-algol is an orthogonally persistent programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

.

PS-algol was an extension of the language S-algol implemented by the Universities of St Andrews

St Andrews

St Andrews is a university town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle.St Andrews has a population of 16,680, making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....

 and Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. S-algol was designed by Ron Morrison

Ron Morrison

Professor Ron Morrison was the head of School of the computer science department of the University of St. Andrews and the inventor of the S-algol programming language. Ron is also heavily involved with local athletics, coaching the University Cross-Country team as well as young, up and coming local...

, and extended and by Pete Bailey, Fred Brown, Paul Cockshott, Ken Chisholm and Al Dearle.

PS-algol was the world's first fully implemented persistent programming language, and had a significant quantity of users both in academia and, notably, in ICL

ICL

-Companies and organizations:* ICL, the ICAO airline code for CAL Cargo Air Lines* International Computers Limited, a British computer hardware and services company, now known as Fujitsu Services...

research labs.

History

PS-algol was conceived by chance, when Ron Morrison was on sabbatical at Edinburgh University and met Malcolm Atkinson. Atkinson had been experimenting with persistent programming languages and was struggling to find a coherent model for a persistent Pascal variant. Morrison, whose interest in general-purpose programming had led to the development of S-algol, a general purpose teaching language, realised that S-algol's type system would more easily allow the addition of orthogonal persistence.