Simula: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:52, 16 February 2016

A family of languages developed in Norway in the 1960's and specifically designed to create simulations. Supersets of Algol 60, the Simula languages are notable for being the first object oriented languages in the world and being the predecessor to both SmallTalk and C++, while the object oriented features of Smalltalk over time moved quite a bit away from their Simula origins, C++ retains the object oriented model it inherited in a surprisingly faithful fashion.

Like so many older programming languages Simula used to be spelled with all caps, or SIMULA, however since the ratification of the Simula 87 standard the convention has been to spell it like any other noun, although when referring to classic versions the all caps convention is commonly used , i.e. SIMULA 66 and so on.

A list of OS/2 implementations of Simula

Cim - Open source - Discontinued - Simula to C translator
PC Simula - Commercial - Discontinued

A list of DOS implementations of Simula

Cim - Open source - Discontinued - Simula to C translator
PC Simula - Commercial - Discontinued - Now freeware

A list of Simula implementations that run under Java

J-Sim - Open source - Current - Simula like rather than pure Simula.

Publications

Simula Bibliography
The Birth of Simula by Stein Krogdahl
An old Simula information text file
Andrew P. Black: Object-oriented programming: some history, and challenges for the next fifty years
Jan Rune Holmevik: Compiling Simula - A book on the history of Simula now available for free on the web.

Tutorials and other learning material

Rob Pooley: An Introduction to Programming in Simula.

Links

The Association of Simula Users (Aka ASU)
Simula info
Simula information page from the University of Montreal.
Simula 67 info
An archive of Peter Sylvester's Simula page - From Archive.org - This was by far the most comprehensive Simula resource on the internet.

Standards

The original paper on SIMULA 67 that most compilers referenced is called Common Base Language.
The Simula 86 standard is reproduced here

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 * [http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Simula/OVERVIEW An old Simula information text file]
 * Andrew P. Black: [https://archive.org/details/arxiv-1303.0427 Object-oriented programming: some history, and challenges for the next fifty years]
+* Jan Rune Holmevik: [http://staff.um.edu.mt/jskl1/simula.html Compiling Simula] - A book on the history of Simula now available for free on the web.
 ====Tutorials and other learning material====