ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

ALGOL 58

Algol 58 is like a very old toy that people used to play with a long time ago. It's like a set of instructions that people wrote down to help computers understand what kinds of things they could do. Just like when you play with toys, you have different rules or things you can do with them, Algol 58 is like that for computers. It's like telling the computer what toys it can play with and how to play with them in a very specific way.

Algol 58 is important because it was one of the first ways that people started to teach computers how to do things. It helped people write programs that could do more complicated things than just adding or subtracting numbers. This was really exciting back then because people were just starting to see what computers could do.

However, over time, people found ways to make new and better toys for computers to play with, and Algol 58 became old and outdated. But we still remember it because it was an important part of how computers learned to do more and more complex things. It helped pave the way for all the amazing things that computers can do today!