Re: The joy of FORTRAN

c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

On 2/27/25 2:43 AM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2025-02-26, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> 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.

 
Wrote 'em, maintained 'em.  They're hell in any language.
 
Having said that, I really enjoyed working in assembly language,
for the privilege of not having some snooty compiler slap your
wrist and say you needed a page of code to do something you could
do in a few lines of assembly code.
 

ASM can give you kind of a buzz, makes you one
with the machine.
 
Alas if I'd learned more COBOL then I could have
had a lucrative retirement income supp maintaining
all those old biz/ops code. Still LOTS of it in
use and it's too expensive now to replace. If it
works you hang on to it with a death grip.

 
It’s not just COBOL any more, it’s all COBOL/CICS/DB2. Same with PL/I.

 
My COBOL days didn't involve any database stuff.  Mind you, I've
managed to avoid any sort of DBMS for my entire career.  However,
I did do enough work with Univac's equivalent of CICS (in both
COBOL and assembly language) to be glad to be done with it.

 
  We ADMIT - COBOL SUCKED.
 
  The "All purpose business language" was just
  HORRIBLE to work with.
 
  I've done some COBOL - but under 100 lines.
  Did NOT love it.
 
  On the flip, a HUGE volume of biz/gov stuff
  that STILL WORKS was writ in COBOL during
  the 60s. It was good, it worked, it STILL
  works. Those 60s nerds were GOOD.
 
  Oh, for Linux, some COBOL development
  environments - including 'IDE' - are to
  be had. It's NOT a dead language - just
  'less popular' than it used to be.
 
  If you ARE a COBOL expert - there's LOTS
  of money to be made. Replacing that COBOL
  is now TOO EXPENSIVE ... so maint has become
  a Big Thing.
 

These days there is no “popular” language, or maybe there are so many that
none predominates. FORTRAN/COBOL used to be the universal languages, then C
took the crown, but now it’s hard to say.

--
Pete