Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 28/09/2024 20:36, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 07:07:40 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
 

I got my start in high school with BASIC, keyed into a teletype and
saved to paper tape.  (Later, I learned how to toggle code into the
front panel of the PDP-8.)

 I had a couple of brushes with BASIC. The IBM 5120 offered a choice of
BASIC or APL so that was a no-brainer. Later I did a follow-up with an
environmental test system. I had originally done the software for the AT
which was the master controller of a number of slaved XTs. (Sorry DEI).
The XTs had been programmed in BASIC by someone else. About 8 months after
I left I cog a phone call asking if I could return to sort the XTs out so
it was back to Ft. Wayne.
 I also wrote a preprocessor to convert BASIC to sort of  an IL and the
necessary run time but I was working in assembler rather than BASIC.
Interpreted BASIC wasn't exactly speedy. Not being a 'computer scientist'
I was fairly naive at the time and was working from a directive 'speed
this stuff up'.

The need to speed up BASIC was why I learnt Assembler...
Then I moved onto C, and that was the best of both worlds really
--
I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as 'gender studies', devoted to it.
Sir Roger Scruton