> Most compilers had extensions from the IV/66 (or 77) – quoted strings, for instance, instead of Hollerith constants, and free form input. Some allowed array index origins other than 1
I can now date exactly when the rot set in. Hollerith constants are good enough for anyone. It's a gosh darned computer, not your nearest and dearest whispering in your ear. It still thinks it is talking to a thundering line printer and getting its input from a real Teletype. Indexing from zero - who ever heard of zero of a thing. Damn quiche eaters. On Mon, 19 Oct 2020 at 22:27, Lux, Jim (US 7140) via Beowulf < beowulf@beowulf.org> wrote: > Yes, the evil-ution of languages proceeded at a much more stately pace in > “arpanet” days. > > > > Typically, you’d have a bunch of vendor specific versions, and since PCs > per-se didn’t exist, you bought the compiler for the machine you had. And > then, maybe you paid attention to the notes in the back of the manual about > deviations from the Fortran IV, 66, or 77. Most compilers had extensions > from the IV/66 (or 77) – quoted strings, for instance, instead of Hollerith > constants, and free form input. Some allowed array index origins other > than 1 (handy for FFTs where you wanted to go from -N/2 to N/2). Most also > had some provision for direct access to files, as opposed to sequential, > but it was very, very OS dependent. > > > > Probably by the 80s and early 90s, with widespread use of personal > computers, and the POSIX standard, you started to see more “machine > independent, standards compliant” Fortran. And, you saw the idea of buying > your compiler from someone different than the computer maker, i.e. > companies like Absoft and Portland Group (now part of nvidia), partly > because the microcomputer manufacturers had no interest in developing > compilers for cheap processors, and sometimes to accommodate a specialized > need. Hence products like Fortran for 8080 under CP/M from Digital > Research. ( I ran Cromemco Fortran IV in 48k of RAM on my mighty Cromemco > Z80 at 4MHz, which I believe was a variant of Fortran-80 from DR) > > > > But even then, it was a pretty slow evolution – the Fortran compilers I > was running in the 80s on microcomputers under MS-DOS wasn’t materially > different from the Fortran I was running in 1978 on a Z80, which wasn’t > significantly different from the Fortran I ran on mainframes (IBM 360, CDC > 6xxx, etc.) and minis (IBM 1130, PDP-11 in the 60s and 70s. What would > change is things like the libraries available to do “non-standard” stuff > (like random disk access). > > > > > > > > > > > > > > *From: *Beowulf <beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org> on behalf of " > beowulf@beowulf.org" <beowulf@beowulf.org> > *Reply-To: *Prentice Bisbal <pbis...@pppl.gov> > *Date: *Monday, October 19, 2020 at 12:21 PM > *To: *"Renfro, Michael" <ren...@tntech.edu>, "beowulf@beowulf.org" < > beowulf@beowulf.org> > *Subject: *Re: [Beowulf] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Re: > Spark, Julia, OpenMPI etc. - all in one place > > > > That's exactly what I suspected. I guess 13 years is like an eternity in > the modern "Speed of the Internet" world we live in, but may not have been > such a slow evolution time of the pre-Internet days. > > Prentice > > On 10/19/20 2:53 PM, Renfro, Michael wrote: > > Minor point of pedagogy from my place in the "learned FORTRAN 77 in 1990" > crowd: your instructor's options would have been: > > > > - standard FORTRAN 77 > - vendor-specific dialect of FORTRAN (VAX or otherwise) > - maybe a pre-release of FORTRAN 90? Wasn't released and standardized > until 1991-92. > > > > Never mind the availability of texts for same. > > > > *From: *Beowulf <beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org> > <beowulf-boun...@beowulf.org> > *Date: *Monday, October 19, 2020 at 12:06 PM > *To: *beowulf@beowulf.org <beowulf@beowulf.org> <beowulf@beowulf.org> > *Subject: *Re: [Beowulf] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Re: > Spark, Julia, OpenMPI etc. - all in one place > > > On 10/19/20 10:28 AM, Douglas Eadline wrote: > > --snip-- > > > >> Unfortunately the presumption seems to be that the old is deficient > >> because it is old, and "my generation†didn't invent it (which is > >> clearly perverse; I see no rush to replace English, French, … which > are > >> all older than any of our programming languages, and which adapt, as do > >> our programming languages). > >> > > I think this has a lot to do with the Fortran situation. In these > "modern" > > times, software seems to have gone from "releases" to a "sliding > > constant release" cycle and anything not released in the past few > > months is "old." > > > > How many people here will wait a 2-6 months before installing > > a "new version" of some package in production to make sure there > > are no major issues. And of course keep older version options > > with software modules. Perhaps because I've been at this a while, > > I have a let it "mellow a bit" approach to shinny new software. > > > > I find it odd that Fortran gets placed in the "old software box" > > because it works while new languages with their constant feature > > churn and versions break dependency trees all over the place, > > and somehow that is good thing. Now get off my lawn. > > > > -- > > Doug > > > Now we're starting to veer of course a little here, but what the hell... > > I think that one of the problems with Fortran is a complete > misunderstanding of it's purpose. People are always shocked when I tell > them the scientists I support are "still" using Fortran. Many people > think that C and C++ replaced Fortran, but that is not true. C was > designed to do low-level programming for tasks like writing operating > systems, and C++ is just an extension of the C language to support > Object-Oriented Programming. Both C and C++ are lower-level and more > general purpose than Fortran. > > Fortran is a domain-specific language, meaning it was meant for a > special purpose, which in this case is doing mathematical operations, > and it's very good for those sorts of things. It's trivial to create > multidimensional arrays in Fortran, which is useful for many math > operations, but C doesn't even support anything beyond 1D arrays. Sure > you can mimic multidimensional arrays by keeping track of stride length, > etc., but that's a lot of work, and I'm betting that's work a lot of > scientists would rather not do. That's just one example of Fortran being > friendlier for science. I'm sure there are other examples, but I'm not a > programmer, and definitely NOT a Fortran programmer. > > I think the main reason most people look at Fortran as an old and > outdated language is because it stuck to the "punch card" formatting > long after punch cards and punch card readers disappeared, but I'm not > sure who to blame for that. Do I blame my freshman "Programming for > Engineers" instructor who taught me Fortran 77 in 1991, or do I blame > whoever maintains the Fortran standard for not updating it before then? > (I honestly don't know what the latest version of Fortran was in the > fall of 1991). > > Prentice > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbeowulf.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fbeowulf&data=04%7C01%7CRenfro%40tntech.edu%7C8486662b21394e7039e408d8745157c5%7C66fecaf83dc04d2cb8b8eff0ddea46f0%7C1%7C0%7C637387240011631429%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=lpfkkIZiPQ734YkMGHzI3M27w5RmZhkJ8dDbAD765dQ%3D&reserved=0 > <https://urldefense.us/v3/__https:/nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https*3A*2F*2Fbeowulf.org*2Fcgi-bin*2Fmailman*2Flistinfo*2Fbeowulf&data=04*7C01*7CRenfro*40tntech.edu*7C8486662b21394e7039e408d8745157c5*7C66fecaf83dc04d2cb8b8eff0ddea46f0*7C1*7C0*7C637387240011631429*7CUnknown*7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0*3D*7C1000&sdata=lpfkkIZiPQ734YkMGHzI3M27w5RmZhkJ8dDbAD765dQ*3D&reserved=0__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!PvBDto6Hs4WbVuu7!dbjGYkPB4I_e3Mpwg3ymxEHvrBoG1cZSjqXNtiKg304pOV-Gy0YzVZwDH06Ry2bLTDuCUDU$> > > -- > > Prentice Bisbal > > Lead Software Engineer > > Research Computing > > Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory > > http://www.pppl.gov > <https://urldefense.us/v3/__http:/www.pppl.gov__;!!PvBDto6Hs4WbVuu7!dbjGYkPB4I_e3Mpwg3ymxEHvrBoG1cZSjqXNtiKg304pOV-Gy0YzVZwDH06Ry2bL3ZCPgrk$> > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf >
_______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
