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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 17:52:02 -0700
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186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:
> On 9/24/24 8:26 AM, Lars Poulsen wrote:
>> On 23/09/2024 23:45, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>> �� Hey, want "Real Computing" ? Try FORTRAN
>>> �� or COBOL. THOSE were the foundation and
>>> �� persist to this day. Wrote a FORTRAN app
>>> �� just a couple of years ago - mostly to vex
>>> �� the New Guys. Also a short COBOL app, that
>>> �� oughtta REALLY give 'em the shits !� :-)
>> 
>> Back in 1985, I changed jobs from a University computer center, where we 
>> did our technical documentation using Univac's @DOC processor, to a 
>> small industrial computer system integration firm, where we built 
>> real-time systems on RSX-11M. I missed the @DOC so much that I wrote a 
>> re-implementation in FORTRAN IV. Used it for years afterwards, until I 
>> landed at a larger house doing communications work on Unix, and switched 
>> to /troff/.
> 
> 
>   Hey, FORTRAN *will* Get It Done as neatly as most
>   anything else. If you need many decades worth of
>   exotic math libs, you'll find them in FORTRAN too.
>   It is NOT an obsolete language/approach.
> 
>   For the younger people, note that Python carries
>   over a lot of FORTRAN ideas, including easy
>   string-slicing.
> 
>   If you can do BASIC then you can do FORTRAN, but
>   does anybody use BASIC anymore ? Intel/IBM did
>   sell BASCOM ... a BASIC compiler ... and it DID
>   speed up yer code like by 10X :-)
> 
>   COBOL ... well ... would rather NOT use it.
>   The whole "self documenting" idea turned out
>   to be crap - COBOL is *hard* to understand
>   sometimes. That's why COBOL programmers can
>   get really high-pay jobs these days, because
>   so much of that irreplacable biz software
>   from the 60s was writ in COBOL. Nobody can
>   AFFORD to re-write it. It worked, it works,
>   it was writ by REALLY GOOD narrow-tie Dilberts,
>   so you just have to MAINTAIN it like forever.
> 

For a long time, FORTRAN was the only remotely portable language, so lots
of programs were written in it.

-- 
Pete