Re: The joy of FORTRAN

Charlie Gibbs wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

On 2024-09-24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
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On Tue, 24 Sep 2024 18:24:02 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>

So does PL/I (or is it PL/1 this week?), which allowed data structures
to be declared COBOL-style.

>
PL/I was IBM’s attempt at a Grand Unification of both “business” and
“scientific” programming in one language. If you thought C++ programming
was full of surprises when your program did unexpected things, PL/I
invented the whole genre of “surprise-ridden programming language”.

>
I had to write one PL/I program in a university CS class.  I think
I finally got it to work (unlike my single attempt at Algol).
One thing I noticed was that the compiler was a real resource
hog compared to any other language (except for Assembler G,
go figure) - which was a disincentive to use it on my meager
supply of computer centre funny money.

In grad school a couple of my professors let me use their accounts, so I never
ran out of funny money. Needed that funny money to write my dissertation in the
DPS typesetting system on a DEC-10. It was vaguely like runoff/tex system.

--
Dismissed.  That's a Star Fleet expression for, "Get out."
-- Capt. Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager, "The Cloud"