Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 18:01:52 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!
>
>Bob D.
"Chess", the mythical chess program of the '70 programmed by Slate and Atkins,
was programmed in Fortran.
I think it was a bitboard program.
Bob will tell me if the above is incorrect (most probably it is incomplete).
Christophe
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