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From: Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 17:52:05 -0700
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Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:
> 
>> On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:24:02 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> 
>>> At the risk of planting flame bait <nudge, nudge>, here in North America
>>> Algol was generally considered the domain of computer science weenies,
>>> while FORTRAN and COBOL were used for applications in the Real World
>>> [tm] (science/engineering and business, respectively).
>> 
>> It didn’t help that Algol-60 had nothing resembling standardized I/O 
>> facilities, whereas these were an integral feature of both Fortran and 
>> COBOL.
>> 
>> This was remedied later in Algol-68, at the cost of adding a lot of 
>> complexity.
>> 
>> This was in the days before POSIX, of course, when every computer system 
>> seemed to do I/O entirely differently. Most of those, um, idiosyncrasies, 
>> have thankfully evaporated.
>> 
>>> So does PL/I (or is it PL/1 this week?), which allowed data structures
>>> to be declared COBOL-style.
>> 
>> PL/I was IBM’s attempt at a Grand Unification of both “business” and 
>> “scientific” programming in one language. If you thought C++ programming 
>> was full of surprises when your program did unexpected things, PL/I 
>> invented the whole genre of “surprise-ridden programming language”.
> 
> My C++ programs NEVER exhibit surprise! (Well, almost never :-D)
> 
> I did a little bit of Algol the first couple years of college, using an
> acoustic modem to access some mainframe in Kansas City.
> 
> Then they got a PDP machine, and I learned how to use RUNOFF. Typing in ALL
> CAPS.
> 
> Did a fair amount of FORTRAN, too, include programming a lab system to run
> experiments, in grad school.
> 

PL/I can surprise you because the language is so powerful. A lot of things
that other languages can’t do are handled by PL/I, but if you’re not aware
of the rules for stuff like data conversion the results might not be what
you expect. I still get bitten occasionally, and am left scratching my
head.

-- 
Pete