Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 15:49:11 02/05/04
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On February 05, 2004 at 18:41:23, Mark Ryan wrote: >On February 05, 2004 at 16:14:57, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>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/ > >Interesting. Dann, if I wanted to move up from a more powerful language than >QBasic, would you say that it would be logical for me to look into Fortran? >(Let's consider it for chess programming.) Fortran would be a good language from many standpoints. However, you won't find much helpful advice, since only a handful of engines are written in Fortran and hundreds are written in C or C++. You can get a good, free C and C++ compiler in MINGW. That would be my recommendation.
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