Re: The joy of FORTRAN

On 24/09/2024 22:14, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
[...]

It didn’t help that Algol-60 had nothing resembling standardized I/O
facilities, whereas these were an integral feature of both Fortran and
COBOL.

 
This is true, but somewhat unfair if intended as a criticism of
A60.  The idea in those days was that each computer had its own Autocode,
each with its own idiosyncrasies [Fortran being, in essence, IBM Autocode]
and very little commonality.  Algol was a project for the expression, in
an agreed format, of algorithms.  Thus, if you wanted to invert a matrix,
or construct a spanning tree, or numerically solve an equation, you took
down your trusty CACM or CompJ, found an appropriate approved algorithm,
and transcribed that into your favourite Autocode.  You weren't really
expected to write complete programs in A60.  That changed later.
 

This was remedied later in Algol-68, at the cost of adding a lot of
complexity.

 
Formats were the only complicated part of A68 [and were commonly,
in the early days, not implemented].  That apart, the transput was easier
than in most languages, ancient and modern.  The "print" routine took one
parameter, a list of printable things [inc positioning], and printed them.
If you didn't want the standard printing style, there were routines to
turn numbers into strings in easy ways.

 
People complained about the size of the A68 reports, but that was
before they saw the modern C standards, which still don't define C in the
sort of formality that A68 achieved.