Sisal is one of the true pioneers of high-level parallel programming. It was roughly contemporary with (slightly preceded) NESL[0], another data-parallel language. Sisal was probably simpler and more pragmatic. I'm not sure why none of these languages ever left the confines of academia. I have tried NESL, and it was probably the most natural parallel programming experience I've seen. Perhaps performance was sub-par in practice?
A modern "spiritual successor" (if you squint a bit) of Sisal is Single Assignment C (SAC), which despite its name, is a pure functional language. SAC is also undeservedly obscure, although that is possibly a result of the compiler being closed source.
A modern "spiritual successor" (if you squint a bit) of Sisal is Single Assignment C (SAC), which despite its name, is a pure functional language. SAC is also undeservedly obscure, although that is possibly a result of the compiler being closed source.
[0]: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~scandal/nesl.html [1]: http://www.sac-home.org/