• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Who's into FORTRAN?

Ah, another enigmatic post.

Unless you are doing serious math and using the existing FORTRAN libraries, why on Earth would anybody want to pick up FORTRAN for pleasure? Only supercomputer types and engineering types use it. You'd best not try to write an operating system in it.

That being said, here is the obligatory FORTRAN joke.

"GOD is real unless declared integer"

If you don't get the joke, I'll explain it in a few days ....
 
> and if you aren't, why the h not?

The principals of FORTRAN are great - however from a CP/M
perspective, I haven't enjoyed using Digital Research's
version of FORTRAN one little bit - possibly due the
compilation of the programs, for a two pass compiler, I've
never seen such a large program from small amount of code
(even when optimised I think the program was like 77kb).

In DOS Simtel had an interesting FORTRAN compiler - which was
"FREE", compared to DR it was much better - it's quite old
too, so if anyone wanted to program FORTRAN (this was based
around FORTRAN 77 - which is good) in DOS, that'd be the
program to get. I don't really program for it though.

The language itself, I believe you can do some fun stuff with
it, most notibly visural text effects I've got one somewhere
from a program which does a few calculations in order to
produce the effect. Becuase maths can play a powerful role,
anyone who could get some Imagery happening can do some neat
tricks with FORTRAN. Obviously though, the language has been
designed for the more mathimatical/scientific perspective
though, have never been sure to know if other languages (such
as Assembly) could be incorporated into it - perhaps in
FORTRAN 90 they did this - though I'm unsure (you'd think some
graphics could come in very handy).

FORTRAN has a lot of history to it - initally came out in 1954
for reasons described above & like another early language (in
COBOL designed in 1959/60 for business applications /
accounting, etc) both of these languages (as with other
languages developed at the time) used Punch cards for programs
to be written. This trend came out in later editions of the
language, so unless you knew where the source code was placed
approrately, you could have tons of errors.
The DOS program I mentioned earlier is like this - however, a
switch within the program allows you to switch it off &
programs can be written however they want to be.

Strickly speaking - you maybe able to get a game out of
FORTRAN, though alternative languages like Pascal, C, Assembly
& BASIC are certainally decent alternatives of handling these
kinds of programs.

CP/M User.
 
Why doesn't one use fortran?
Because it is really freaking complicated.
I did a project with it in my programming II+ class, we had to write a game with wording, kind of like the old rpg games, but it took far more code and time than it would have in cobalt, or even java.
It really showed us how efficient languages have gotten.
Atari, an OS can be qualified as an OS with little or no real function.
I could write an app that loads on boot and you can view the HD structure, that would quilify as an OS, but not a good one. He may have screwed around with fortran, but him abandoning it quickly is a sign it isn't worth playing with.
Like Mr. Brutman said, it is a mathmatically based language, requiring classes in finite math(which I am taking..lol) and you'll need to be more familiar with your basic machine coding.
 
To be fair, FORTRAN is 50 years old. It must have some merit to stay. Although I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.
 
There's a Fortran compiler on the Cray I use, but I don't dare mess with it. I hate math and it hates me. I'm going to leave Fortran alone....

-VK
 
I did a little work in Fortran a while back. It depends on what your goal is, but it is an older language missing many of the capabilities today's programmers take for granted.

Then again, I've worked in COBOL, BASIC (early versions of tiny BASIC and MS stuff) MUMPS (there's a nightmare for you - a programming language designed by a doctor - ugh) and a variety of visual programming environments. Sometimes the early procedural stuff is actually easier.
 
A friend of mine did dry-runs of the expected outcome in this week's fantasy football in Fortran, because that was the programming language he knew best (he could get his way around C too, but not as elegantly).

I believe the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) contains frontend for Fortran 90. Not sure about Fortran 77 though. Personally I've never touched these languages, as they were obsoleted (or only used in specific places) by the early 1990's.

I went to a computer consultant, and they had got a request from a customer who was using some broken monster system in RPG (the programming language, not role-playing games). The consultant made these conclusions:

1. We don't have the experience in RPG to fix the system.
2. It is not worth the money to lend in someone else to do it.
3. It will take an awful lot of time to write a new system from scratch in another programming language.
4. The customer will get hiccups when we tell him the cost of 3.

So in the end, they politely declined the customer. Perhaps they found another consultant who has been sitting with underemployed RPG experts since the 70'ties.
 
Loosely on topic, does anybody do anything with FORTH? now that is an odd lingo. A nice chap gave me a ROM for my BBC Micro and I can't make head nor tail of it.
 
bbcmicro said:
Loosely on topic, does anybody do anything with FORTH? now that is an odd lingo. A nice chap gave me a ROM for my BBC Micro and I can't make head nor tail of it.
Click to expand...

I've got FORTH for the C64 and, I think, Apple ][ as well as some other platforms. I've never tried it, though. There is a FIG (FORTH Interest Group) around that had a booth at the VCF a year or two back.
 
I have Forth for VIC-20 etc. I have really tried to get my head into it, briefly read the book by Leo Brodie and made some simple building blocks, but never got to do anything more advanced. Too bad, because it may be a good intermediate language between Basic and pure machine code, if it wasn't for the custom Forth interpreter required.
 
"Unless you are doing serious math and using the existing FORTRAN libraries, why on Earth would anybody want to pick up FORTRAN for pleasure?"

Well...it's vintage. Let's not forget what forum we're on. What would be more groovy then some game or whatever written in it? It's been quite some time, but it (at least the basics of it) were pretty easy to learn.
And as to the libraries - imagine decades of stuph written that you can tack on to your program. That in itself has got to be interesting.

"I've never seen such a large program from small amount of code"

That's unusual. I was of the persuasion it was capable of particularly speedy executables.

"have never been sure to know if other languages (such as Assembly) could be incorporated into it"

Modern versions could certainly have inline assembly code. Not sure about IBM Pro FORTRAN 1.0, F77 compliant, unlike MicroTrash's early versions. This was written by Ryan-McFarland. Already had the images, but obtained original disks and docs. O man what a haul.
Grace Hopper wrote COBOL, right? Figures a dame would write such a verbose language LOL. Did she write FORTRAN too. Or do I got it all backwards?

"Like Mr. Brutman said, it is a mathmatically based language, requiring classes in finite math(which I am taking..lol) and you'll need to be more familiar with your basic machine coding."

Neither the math nor the knowledge of the machine innards bothers me personally. I'll be playing around with it in the next few weeks probably. Next question, who's into C LOL LOL. I think I have (had?) Quick C around someplace. Haven't seen it around lately though :(
 
I've got some very old C compilers for CP/M systems on 8" disks.

BTW, if I remember correctly the original Adventure (Collosal Cave - XYZZY, Plover, etc.) was written in Fortran.

I was picking through some old docs this weekend and found a sheet with someones notes on it. His scrap paper was an old listing of the data file for Adventure containing the text spit back at users. It wasn't complete, but it was funny to see again.

Back in the early 1980s I had a complete listing, code and data, on greenbar from an IBM line printer. I wish I hadn't trashed that. :(
 
Terry Yager said:
Grace Hopper invented FORTRAN? Kewl, I didn't know that.
Click to expand...

Fortran (properly FORTRAN) was invented by Griffith John Backus. Grace Hopper gave us COBOL.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top