How many years we have been programming in Fortran
Weisberg
subjects, is like the following:
"... In all the years I have been programming in Fortran (35 years),
..."
Only 35 years? I have been programming in Fortran for 42 years,
starting with the IBM 1620. Also I programmed in "Mortran" on the
Johniac computer 43 years ago. We wrote our code on forms and
submitted it to Keypunch.
Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
Richard E Maine
> I have been programming in Fortran for 42 years,
> starting with the IBM 1620. Also I programmed in "Mortran" on the
> Johniac computer 43 years ago. We wrote our code on forms and
> submitted it to Keypunch.
>
> Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
> active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
You've got me beat easily. My first was in 1968, which would be...(if
I can still do arithmetic :-)) 36 years.
But I didn't have anything nice like a keypunch to work with for
that machine. IIRC it was some kind of GE machine somewhere
across the country (Texas? I was in Virginia). Input was by
teletype and paper tape. Cards were a big improvement over
paper tape IMO.
I didn't see a 1620 until late 1969. It was "neat" because I was
allowed to actually run the machine myself. I'm not sure I had
ever even actually seen any of the previous machines I worked with.
Of course, in 1969, the 1620 was a bit old...which was probably
why freshmen like myself could touch it.
--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: my first.last at org.domain | experience comes from bad judgment.
org: nasa, domain: gov | -- Mark Twain
beli...@127.0.0.1
weisb...@yahoo.com (Weisberg) wrote:
>Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
>active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
On June 30, 2004 August Miller said he had 43+ years of Fortran experience,
so you are tied for "most experienced" AFAIK.
Message 49 in thread
From: August Miller (ami...@dirac.nmsu.edu)
Subject: Re: What can be done in FORTRAN that cannot be done in C/C++?
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Date: 2004-06-30 08:01:09 PST
As they say, FWIW:
In 16 years of doing a few things in various flavors of C, and 43+
years of FORTRAN, I have yet to find a C or C++ compiler which
can evaluate (without further ado) the equivalent of
Z3=Z1*SIN(Z2)
where all the variables are complex numbers.
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Beowulf
40 years. Started with Fortran II on IBM7094, then switched to Fortran IV.
J. Arkuszewski
Dr Ivan D. Reid
wrote in <412fac4f$0$332$4d4e...@read.news.ch.uu.net>:
I can only claim a first-year Applied Maths course at ANU in 1970.
Very brief (about 3 lectures). One exercise was something like, given the
drag coefficient of a boat and its power output calculate the maximum
ground speed against a given river flow. The lecturer obviously expected
us to use a loop construct to simulate the dynamic situation until an
equilibrium was approached. He was a bit put out when I solved the
differential equation first, and coded its solution in a fraction of the
CPU time of the iterative approach.
There was more in 3rd Year, IIRC, then I really jumped into it in
my PhD, modelling electron transport in gases.
<egogoogles for 'reid ramp model'>
--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan...@brunel.ac.uk Room 40-1-B12, CERN
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".
Gary L. Scott
>
> A recurring theme in posts on this forum, on all sorts of different
> subjects, is like the following:
>
> "... In all the years I have been programming in Fortran (35 years),
> ..."
>
> Only 35 years? I have been programming in Fortran for 42 years,
> starting with the IBM 1620. Also I programmed in "Mortran" on the
> Johniac computer 43 years ago. We wrote our code on forms and
> submitted it to Keypunch.
Gosh, I feel so YOUNG!
>
> Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
> active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
--
Gary Scott
mailto:gary...@ev1.net
Fortran Library: http://www.fortranlib.com
Support the Original G95 Project: http://www.g95.org
-OR-
Support the GNU GFortran Project: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html
Why are there two? God only knows.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep, voting on what to eat for dinner...
Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the vote. - Thomas Jefferson
Brian Salter-Duke
I started programming in Mercury Autocode almost exactly 44 years ago
and then moved to Elliott Autocide and Algol before learning Fortran in
about 1965. I'm still writing Fortran code as well as playing with C,
C++, Perl etc.
--
Brian Salter-Duke Humpty Doo, Nr Darwin, Australia
My real address is b_duke(AT)octa4(DOT)net(DOT)au
Use this for reply or followup
James Giles
is 50 years old this year. I know it wasn't released until 1957,
but work began in 1954. I have a copy of the first preliminary
report memo dated Nov. 10, 1954. It's interesting to see the
kind of things that were different in the first concept and what
kinds of things remained the same.
Is there any commemoration of the event contemplated?
--
J. Giles
"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare
E P Chandler
> A recurring theme in posts on this forum, on all sorts of different
> subjects, is like the following:
>
> "... In all the years I have been programming in Fortran (35 years),
> ..."
>
> active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
I learned Fortran in 62 or 63 as part of an experiment in "new math"
when a professor at a local university let us write programs on coding
forms. He had the programs keypunched and run. The next week we got
the printouts back. Of course this was not _professional programming_
- we were in grade school.
Jan Hengeveld
"Weisberg" <weisb...@yahoo.com> schreef in bericht
news:78f60ba9.0408...@posting.google.com...
I am surprised, nobody talks about DEC PDP computers.
I started in 1965, programming ALGOL-60 on the EL-X8
I think in 1968, our institute bought a DEC PDP-9, serial number 292, on
which I programmed in fortran-IV and of course assembler.
Later I had PDP-11 and lots of PDP-11/03
Donald H. Gudehus
computer was an early IBM (70x series).
Donald
leslie
: I have been programming in Fortran for 42 years, starting with
: 43 years ago. We wrote our code on forms and submitted it to Keypunch.
:
: Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
: active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
42 years beats my 38 years.
My Fortran experience, starting with Fortran IV, started in 1966 at
TRW Systems on IBM 7094, and then the Univac 1108.
Prior to that, I attended the University of Houston where MAD was
the first language. Computer Science was taught by the Math Dept,
and the faculty included Dr. Elliot I. Organick.
After TRW, I worked for Shell for 25 years where I wrote and maintained
Fortran on Univac 1100s, Xerox XDS 940s, Honeywell GE/PAC 4000s, Modcomps,
and VAXes.
--Jerry Leslie
Note: les...@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email
Bill Bertram
"Weisberg" <weisb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:78f60ba9.0408...@posting.google.com...
My first programming was done in 1961 using Fortran II on an IBM 1620 at,
what was then, the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. I have been actively
Fortranning ever since and still get paid for doing it.
Cheers,
Bill.
David Ham
"Dr Ivan D. Reid" <Ivan...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:
> I can only claim a first-year Applied Maths course at ANU in
> 1970.
> Very brief (about 3 lectures). One exercise was something like, given
> the drag coefficient of a boat and its power output calculate the
> maximum ground speed against a given river flow. The lecturer
> obviously expected us to use a loop construct to simulate the dynamic
> situation until an equilibrium was approached. He was a bit put out
> when I solved the differential equation first, and coded its solution
> in a fraction of the CPU time of the iterative approach.
>
> There was more in 3rd Year, IIRC, then I really jumped into it
> in
> my PhD, modelling electron transport in gases.
>
I'm afraid it's rather dropped off the curriculum at ANU. I only started
to write Fortran in honours year and I tought myself with the help of
the great M&R. Since that was 2000 I am definitely not in the running in
this thread :-).
(BTW Ivan, you may or may not have heard but Bernhard Neumann finally
passed away at the end of 2002 - and he was still riding his bike into
university most days not long before!)
David
Kevin G. Rhoads
>starting with the IBM 1620. Also I programmed in "Mortran" on the
>Johniac computer 43 years ago. We wrote our code on forms and
>submitted it to Keypunch.
Well ahead of me for years, but I keypunched my own. Started
with FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL and assembler on CDC-6400 at Lehigh
in Summer 1968 (I was in High School, Lehigh was changing over
from a GE-225 to the CDC-6400 and needed temporary help during
the transition. I was a gofer, kept the card reader fed and the
separated printouts &c. My pay was all the compute time I
could use.
Also some experience with two PDP-8 machines (both 8i's IIRC)
that mostly in assembler. Some very limited IBM 1620 experience
and a couple of IBM 360's running OS/PCP or OS/MFT (FORTRAN G and H,
and a little Watfor, PL/I, COBOL and BAL.)
Then in 1969/70, while a freshman at MIT, I wrote a guide to hacking
OS/360 (I still have the card deck, no lister though) -- but that's
another story ...
So, Fortran, a little over 1/3 century -- and still going strong,
MS Fortran 5.1 for 16 bit stuff, OpenWatcom and DVF/CVF mostly for
32 bit stuff.
James Parsly
IBM 1620 in 1975 at Oak Ridge High School. I can remember doing a 10,000
step integration problem that took about 45 minutes; My father took it into
work
at ORNL and ran it on the IBM mainframe and it took about 17 seconds.
Bonus points if you can remember what this did:
070000700007
"Weisberg" <weisb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:78f60ba9.0408...@posting.google.com...
Ken Plotkin
[snip]
>Only 35 years? I have been programming in Fortran for 42 years,
>starting with the IBM 1620. Also I programmed in "Mortran" on the
[snip]
You've got me beat. But you made me realize I've just hit my 40th
anniversary. I learned Fortran in the summer of 1964, as an
undergraduate. Not a regular course - just a 3 or 4 day quickie
taught by the head of the computer department to a group of
engineering aids and grad students.
I don't go back to the really old machines, though. The school had an
IBM 7040, IBM's first all-transistor machine. I missed all the fun of
drum memory, etc., that the old timers used to talk about in the
keypunch room.
>Who has been programming in Fortran the longest and is still mentally
>active enough to follow Internet newsgroups?
One needs to be mentally active to follow newsgroups??? :-)
Ken Plotkin
Eddie Burdak
<Snip>
> As they say, FWIW:
>
> In 16 years of doing a few things in various flavors of C, and 43+
> years of FORTRAN, I have yet to find a C or C++ compiler which
> can evaluate (without further ado) the equivalent of
>
> Z3=Z1*SIN(Z2)
>
> where all the variables are complex numbers.
Out of curiosity, how about something a little simpler
A=B**2
Where A and B are not even complex
Maybe its me - but I thought C had to go away and use a power function.
Rgds
Eddie
beli...@127.0.0.1
I think B**2 in Fortran is slightly more readable than pow(B,2) in C, but
a bigger problem with pow is that it handles an integer base or exponent
by converting to floating-point numbers. C++ does allow for integer exponents,
but I don't see a function taking an integer base.
Good Fortran compilers evaluate A**B intelligently for all types of A and
B.
From http://www.dinkumware.com/htm_cpl/math.html#pow , the C and C++ exponentiation
functions are
double pow(double x, double y);
float pow(float x, float y); [C++ only]
long double pow(long double x, long double y); [C++ only]
double pow(double x, int y); [C++ only]
float pow(float x, int y); [C++ only]
long double pow(long double x, int y); [C++ only]
float powf(float x, float y); [required with C99]
long double powl(long double x,
long double y); [required with C99]
glen herrmannsfeldt
(someone wrote)
>>>In 16 years of doing a few things in various flavors of C, and 43+
>>>years of FORTRAN, I have yet to find a C or C++ compiler which
>>>can evaluate (without further ado) the equivalent of
>>>Z3=Z1*SIN(Z2)
>>>where all the variables are complex numbers.
Rumors are the C99 supports complex numbers reasonably
well, but compilers are slow in arriving.
>>Out of curiosity, how about something a little simpler
>>A=B**2
>>Where A and B are not even complex
>>Maybe its me - but I thought C had to go away and use a power function.
Well, some do something like
#define SQ(x) ((x)*(x))
which is a little better than using pow().
It depends on the compiler recognizing the common subexpression
if the argument is an expression. I have complained about
this a number of times when the discussion has come up in
comp.lang.c (which I don't read very often now).
I don't know what C99 has to help this case.
-- glen
Weisberg
> years of FORTRAN, I have yet to find a C or C++ compiler which
> can evaluate (without further ado) the equivalent of
>
> Z3=Z1*SIN(Z2)
>
> where all the variables are complex numbers.
>
Does C# count? It generates native machine-language code.
Complex c1 = new Complex(0.0, 1.0);
Complex c2 = new Complex(3.0, 4.0);
Complex c3 = c1 * Complex.Sin(c2);
There are several class libraries for complex math. One is at
http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/complex_math.asp
Dave Thompson
<g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> beli...@aol.com wrote:
>
> (someone wrote)
>
> >>>In 16 years of doing a few things in various flavors of C, and 43+
> >>>years of FORTRAN, I have yet to find a C or C++ compiler which
> >>>can evaluate (without further ado) the equivalent of
>
> >>>Z3=Z1*SIN(Z2)
>
> >>>where all the variables are complex numbers.
>
> Rumors are the C99 supports complex numbers reasonably
> well, but compilers are slow in arriving.
>
C++(98) also requires complex, actually in template syntax as
std::complex<T>, and even my creaky g++ 2.95.8 handles it fine.
> >>Out of curiosity, how about something a little simpler
>
> >>A=B**2
>
> >>Where A and B are not even complex
>
> >>Maybe its me - but I thought C had to go away and use a power function.
>
Well, you have to *code* it as a call to pow(). The compiler would be
*permitted* to recognize a constant integer, or any integer, as the
second argument and special-case it, but I don't know any that do.
Though if there is any, I'd bet modestly it's icc.
> Well, some do something like
>
> #define SQ(x) ((x)*(x))
>
> which is a little better than using pow().
>
Some *programmers* that is, not compilers. And it's wrong if the
(actual) argument x has side effects; to cover that case in C99, many
earlier C's as an extension, or C++ you can make it an inline function
-- but in C only for one specific type, in C++ you can overload.
> It depends on the compiler recognizing the common subexpression
> if the argument is an expression. I have complained about
> this a number of times when the discussion has come up in
> comp.lang.c (which I don't read very often now).
>
> I don't know what C99 has to help this case.
>
Standardized 'inline' functions as above, if you want to go that way.
But nothing builtin for integer powers.
C99 does have (finally?!) single/double/extended variants of math
functions, optionally accessible by generic names and also the complex
variants where applicable, so you're not stuck always doing double
even when it's more (or less!) precision than you need. And an
official, but optional, "IEEE" (60559) binding.
- David.Thompson1 at worldnet.att.net