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From: Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:58:09 -0400
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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.

-- 
SUN Microsystems:
	The Network IS the Load Average.