Re: The joy of FORTRAN-like languages

On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 07:22:45 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Then along came Gnu C and everyone wanted to fix its bugs and they
could, so it just took over.

gcc and Linux was an eye opener. Much of our software was developed for
RS6000 systems running AIX but Linux offered a low cost alternative for
development. What we found was AIX was VERY forgiving about null accesses
and so forth. It took a while to fix the crashes but it definitely made
the code more robust.

I forget if it was 10 or 11 but gcc eventually pointed out another nasty
habit in the legacy code, defining variables in hearer files. Fortunately
there is a flag to get around multiple definitions.

I think the worst thing was Turbo Pascal, which convinced huge numbers
of amateurs that they could actually write code.

I bought the CP/M version out of curiosity of what $50 would get you. I
was impressed by the speed compared to BDS but I didn't like the language
enough to do much with it.