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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2024 22:04:31 +0100
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 28/09/2024 20:36, rbowman wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 07:07:40 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
> 
>> I got my start in high school with BASIC, keyed into a teletype and
>> saved to paper tape.  (Later, I learned how to toggle code into the
>> front panel of the PDP-8.)
> 
> I had a couple of brushes with BASIC. The IBM 5120 offered a choice of
> BASIC or APL so that was a no-brainer. Later I did a follow-up with an
> environmental test system. I had originally done the software for the AT
> which was the master controller of a number of slaved XTs. (Sorry DEI).
> The XTs had been programmed in BASIC by someone else. About 8 months after
> I left I cog a phone call asking if I could return to sort the XTs out so
> it was back to Ft. Wayne.
> 
> I also wrote a preprocessor to convert BASIC to sort of  an IL and the
> necessary run time but I was working in assembler rather than BASIC.
> Interpreted BASIC wasn't exactly speedy. Not being a 'computer scientist'
> I was fairly naive at the time and was working from a directive 'speed
> this stuff up'.

The need to speed up BASIC was why I learnt Assembler...

Then I moved onto C, and that was the best of both worlds really


-- 
I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you 
can avoid it; the new culture tells us you should always take offence if 
you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed 
whole academic subjects, such as 'gender studies', devoted to it.

Sir Roger Scruton