Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
in [Fortran]
|
From: Richard E Maine on 19 Oct 2006 14:09 Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urjlew(a)bellsouth.net> wrote: > Keypunchers, unless summer interns from a technical school or such like, > are not expected to be the Fortran pre compiler syntax checking phase. When I was an obnoxious youngster (the young part has changed :-)) still in undergrad school doing keypunching for some of the senior engineers, I got my figurative hand slapped for "improving" some of the code on the fly as a typed. In retrospect, I realize that some of my "improvements" weren't. For example, I'd "hand-optimize" literal arithmetic expressions, doing things along the lines of changing 2.0*3.14159 into 6.28318. My "optimization" probably didn't actually speed up anything, but made the derivation of the code less clear. (Ok, most engineers would probably recognize the 2*pi, but other cases weren't so recognizable). And, although I did deserve the figurative hand-slap (I should have at least mentioned my proposed "improvements" instead of just doing them), it probably had a bit of extra feeling behind it because in other cases my corrections actually fixed bugs, which embarassed the senior engineer. -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: my first.last at org.domain| experience comes from bad judgment. org: nasa, domain: gov | -- Mark Twain
From: Larry__Weiss on 19 Oct 2006 14:51 Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj wrote: > Keypunchers, unless summer interns from a technical school or such like, > are not expected to be the Fortran pre compiler syntax checking phase. > Similarly we instructed our student help staffing the input-output > window (i.e. accepting job decks & handing out the printed outputs) > not to hand out programming advice, i.e. not play at being consultants, > even if they were seniors with some programming courses under their > belts. > Plus, learning to code benefits from a "school of hard-knocks" experience. You don't really want to take that away from someone who is serious about learning the art (or is forced to become so because of job expectations). The proper place for such feedback is in a mentoring partnership or in a formal code-review. - Larry
From: Larry__Weiss on 19 Oct 2006 14:52 jmfbahciv(a)aol.com wrote: > Right. I'd be lining up their 9 edges. No keypuncher would > let that go through without painting those cards very red. > As others have alluded, are you sure about your recollections? Can you give specific cases where such "red-lining" was productive? - Larry
From: Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj on 19 Oct 2006 18:28 Richard E Maine wrote: > Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urjlew(a)bellsouth.net> wrote: > > >>Keypunchers, unless summer interns from a technical school or such like, >>are not expected to be the Fortran pre compiler syntax checking phase. > > > When I was an obnoxious youngster (the young part has changed :-)) still > in undergrad school doing keypunching for some of the senior engineers, > I got my figurative hand slapped for "improving" some of the code on the > fly as a typed. > > In retrospect, I realize that some of my "improvements" weren't. For > example, I'd "hand-optimize" literal arithmetic expressions, doing > things along the lines of changing 2.0*3.14159 into 6.28318. My > "optimization" probably didn't actually speed up anything, but made the > derivation of the code less clear. (Ok, most engineers would probably > recognize the 2*pi, but other cases weren't so recognizable). > > And, although I did deserve the figurative hand-slap (I should have at > least mentioned my proposed "improvements" instead of just doing them), > it probably had a bit of extra feeling behind it because in other cases > my corrections actually fixed bugs, which embarassed the senior > engineer. > Another gratuitous comment! Keypunchers are supposed to quickly and accurately convert text written on coding forms, or in some cases other forms, into machine readable media. Anything that slows down this process, such as reading the material for comprehension will tend to slow down the efficiency of the transfer process. This is another reason that the keypuncher should not play at being an editor, or filter. -- Rostyk
From: Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj on 19 Oct 2006 18:47
Larry__Weiss wrote: > Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj wrote: > >> Keypunchers, unless summer interns from a technical school or such like, >> are not expected to be the Fortran pre compiler syntax checking phase. >> Similarly we instructed our student help staffing the input-output >> window (i.e. accepting job decks & handing out the printed outputs) >> not to hand out programming advice, i.e. not play at being consultants, >> even if they were seniors with some programming courses under their >> belts. > > > > > Plus, learning to code benefits from a "school of hard-knocks" > experience. You don't really want to take that away from someone > who is serious about learning the art (or is forced to become so > because of job expectations). > > The proper place for such feedback is in a mentoring partnership > or in a formal code-review. > > - Larry > > > Yes..., Well that's a different discussion. Those users who came to the consulting desk with a thin printout, which they hadn't even bothered to unwrap from around their deck, and dropped it on the desk with the immediate question "why didn't this run", did annoy us a lot. Some users developed a reputation for this. That is one instance when I'd have been glad to apply the hard knocks methodology. -- Rostyk |