Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 13:14:57 02/05/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 05, 2004 at 14:57:32, Bob Durrett wrote: > >Quote from an MSNBC article: > >Forty-seven years after IBM unleashed it, Fortran (formula translation), the >original “high-level” programming language, would seem to be the infotech >equivalent of cuneiform. But it’s still widely used, especially in scientific >computing. Why has this Eisenhower-era veteran outlasted so many hardware and >software generations? “It’s partly the learning curve,” says Hewlett-Packard >Laboratories’ Hans Boehm, former chair of the Association for Computing >Research’s special-interest group on programming languages. “For some people >it’s good enough, and it’s hard to let go of something once you learn it.” >Adaptability and compatibility, which made Fortran the programmers’ lingua >franca in the 1960s and ’70s, are also key to its viability. Major upgrades have >boosted efficiency and added features while preserving old versions intact. So a >vast number of tried-and-true Fortran 77 programs jibe with the current Fortran >90. Microsoft, take note. > >Maybe chess programmers are missing out on the best language of all! For numeric work, Fortran is as good or better than anything else. The available code base is larger than any other language. There is a free Fortran 95 compiler that nobody ever seems to hear about. ftp://ftp.swcp.com/pub/walt/F/
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