Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
in [Fortran]
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From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 23 Oct 2006 02:17 Terence wrote: (snip regarding function names in early Fortran.) (By the way, who remembers Algol?) I almost still remember my first program, which was in Algol on a B5500 when I was nine. It computed the triangle inequality, given the lengths of three sides indicating if they were, or were not a triangle. My father was supposed to teach an Algol course and practiced on me. I had earlier learned how to use a keypunch. After that, I didn't do much programming until learning Fortran during the summer when I was 14. Mostly I had the IBM S/360 Fortran reference manual to learn from. -- glen
From: Terence on 23 Oct 2006 05:40 glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: (snip) > After that, I didn't do much programming until learning Fortran > during the summer when I was 14. Mostly I had the IBM S/360 > Fortran reference manual to learn from. So you were born in 1950?
From: Joe Morris on 23 Oct 2006 08:51 "Terence" <tbwright(a)cantv.net> writes: >Glen wrote:- >For the first Fortran compiler, in the manual 50 years and one week >old: >"The name of a function is 4 to 7 alphabetic or numeric characters, >(not special characters) of which the last must be F and the first >must be alphabetic. Also, the first must be X if and only if the >function is to be fixed point." >You know, I DON't remember that!! >I think I still have the 4/1/61 Fortran manual around (the one with >SENSE SWITCH set reset and and test instuctions and the punch output >and other now-"funny" stuff). but I'm darn sure there was no mention of >an "F" or "X" as a required leading character. Perhaps this is a >non-IBM specification of somewhere between 1957 and 1961 before >programsa became more shareable? (By the way, who remembers Algol?) H'mmm...which FORTRAN manual are you referring to? Assuming that it's an actual manual (I noticed that the date you give is April Fool's Day) that doesn't tell me who published it, or for what implementation. Joe Morris
From: glen herrmannsfeldt on 23 Oct 2006 13:11 In comp.lang.fortran Terence <tbwright(a)cantv.net> wrote: > glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: > (snip) >> After that, I didn't do much programming until learning Fortran >> during the summer when I was 14. Mostly I had the IBM S/360 >> Fortran reference manual to learn from. > So you were born in 1950? 1958. It was actually a S/360 and S/370 manual, but it wasn't until the next year that I used a S/370 machine. So not quite at the beginning of S/360. -- glen
From: Greg Lindahl on 23 Oct 2006 14:03
In article <aTyOFpHpvCHL092yn(a)visi.com>, Richard Steiner <rsteiner(a)visi.com> wrote: >Yes, I could see 10 or 12 characters being quite useful, but things get >tedious to type quite quickly. :-( Folks haven't gotten why this is an issue. The problem is not that a programmer feels obligated to use the extra characters, it's that a programmer's coworkers might. Then again, the dominant style in C these days is using quite long variable names, as a form of documentation. -- greg |