Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 10:04:38 -0800, John Ames wrote:

On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:13:35 -0500 c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
 

* (Having started on micros of the early '90s, the idea of a
computing environment where assembly isn't just a systems-
implementation thing but a first-class applications language is quite
intriguing to me...)

 
Used to be a kinda main/common thing.
 
Compilers were new and expensive. Apps were still kinda small. So,
ASM was often The Way - and provided The Most fine control.

 
Indeed - and the architectures were designed to facilitate it. 'Course,
as has been discussed, that eventually led to creeping featurism and
terminal over-engineering and finally birthed RISC design, but it's
interesting to think back on the period where there really was a happy
medium...

One interesting tale about over-engineering (the VAX POLY instructions),
from someone who really knows:

 http://simh.trailing-edge.com/docs/vax_poly.pdf

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