Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 15:17:51 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

On 2/25/25 2:33 PM, vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

I went from DEC20 FORTRAN to pdp11 Basic (it had matrix math) to DEC
SAIL (Algol) to Pascal to C to Python

 
  Sounds familiar ... though 'C' became available on the PDP-11s (was
  writ on them). Still pref Pascal over Python where possible.
 

Assembler and COBOL were needed but avoided

 
  Better ASM than COBOL

 
Depends on what you want to do. Assembler is a lot more fun, but I
wouldn’t want to write a payroll system in it.

I recall one project that used a macroassembler to create sort of a subset
of C. My reaction was 'Okay, but why?'.  I suppose it made sense in an era
when people felt compelled to write their own editors. Or, Gods forbid,
they learned enough about lex and yacc to be really dangerous.