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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: Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:42:57 -0700
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 27/02/2025 02:14, rbowman wrote:
>> On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 15:17:51 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>> 
>>> c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>>>> On 2/25/25 2:33 PM, vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>>>>> I went from DEC20 FORTRAN to pdp11 Basic (it had matrix math) to DEC
>>>>> SAIL (Algol) to Pascal to C to Python
>>>> 
>>>> Sounds familiar ... though 'C' became available on the PDP-11s (was
>>>> writ on them). Still pref Pascal over Python where possible.
>>>> 
>>>>> Assembler and COBOL were needed but avoided
>>>> 
>>>> Better ASM than COBOL
>>> 
>>> Depends on what you want to do. Assembler is a lot more fun, but I
>>> wouldn’t want to write a payroll system in it.
>> 
>> I recall one project that used a macroassembler to create sort of a subset
>> of C. My reaction was 'Okay, but why?'.  I suppose it made sense in an era
>> when people felt compelled to write their own editors. Or, Gods forbid,
>> they learned enough about lex and yacc to be really dangerous.
>> 
> When all you had was Macro assembler, writing a good library of Macros 
> gave you almost a high level language, except it wasn't portable.
> 
> C *was* portable, mostly.
> 
> And it was faster to write than Macros assembler. It was really a no 
> brainer.
> 

I have to disagree, but it’s mostly what you’re familiar with. I used to be
able to crank out assembler mostly as fast as I could write (or type), with
some thought required for the tricky bits. C is not really faster for me to
write, or wasn’t when I was doing a bunch of it. (now it takes me longer).
Some of the idioms in the language are puzzling, and especially more to
read code than to write it.

C’s selling point was its portability. Better than FORTRAN used to be. Its
original intent was to be a portable high-level assembler, but
unfortunately it started being used for stuff it wasn’t suited for.

-- 
Pete