Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 30/09/2024 08:40, rbowman wrote:

On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:36:11 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

    There's always a psychology in the computer world that immediately
    embraces the "Newest/Greatest Thing"
    whether it's actually good/improved or not. Shit, I remember when 'C'
    was in that category ... that one DID hang on

 That's something that's puzzled me all of my life and on a wider scale
than computer languages. Why does Religion X survive while Religion Y,
which is equally as plausible/implausible become an also ran? Why does C
hand on while C++ never quite lived up to its promises? Why is Pike
completely off the map? It isn't that bad of a C-like language?
 Some things live the AC vs. DC wars have valid technological answers.
Others like the i86 architecture seem more like accidents at a point in
time.

Damn good question. I can answer for C and c++ personally, in that the investment in time and effort to learn C++ and be fluent at it was simply not worth it, whereas with C back in 1983 it was the other way about. a huge increase in productivity for the simple expedient of reading and digesting K &R which was not a big book at all.
I have MASSIVE books to describe out of date Jasvascript and C++ ...
Stroustrup joked that C+++ would increase employment of programmers.
I also briefly was paid to port FORTH to an 8086 board. Not a PC, a part of a minicomputer. I was impressed by how small it was, but utterly unimpressed by how you were supposed to document it.
LISP - Lots of Irrelevant Superfluous Parentheses is simply a theoretical language I never saw the point of. Same with Prolog.
Pascal was impractical in an engineering context as it didn't envisage real world I/O. Too formal and academic
Modula 2 was Pascal on steroids.  Designed to write bug proof code. Well anyone can do that...
printf("hello world"); That's bug proof. Just wont fly an F35
I had a girl friend who did COBOL back in the day. I liked it. Burt financial programming want my 'thing'
I did FORTRAN,. Well its pretty much a better form of BASIC. Good languages for non computer people.
I learnt PHP because it was the de facto  open source code to run active websites. I learnt SQL and in particular mySQL because they were again the de facto choice . I learn JavaScript because it is the only language that runs in peoples browsers, and if you ant a smart web app there is no other real choice.
I hate it. It really is the most utter and complete shit. So shit they had to write json to cover up  the mess.
But is here to stay because it was there, like MSDOS, at a time when we needed a standard, and like MSDOS it too is a pile of crap.
This suggests to me that there are two factors that make for a languages success.
1/. It aptly fills a niche really well.
or
2/. It is the only language in town, and people learn how to avoid the worts of its egregiousness.
--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "
Alan Sokal