From owner-sc22wg5+sc22wg5-dom8=www.open-std.org@open-std.org Mon Jan 25 21:55:03 2016 Return-Path: X-Original-To: sc22wg5-dom8 Delivered-To: sc22wg5-dom8@www.open-std.org Received: by www.open-std.org (Postfix, from userid 521) id BAA45358762; Mon, 25 Jan 2016 21:55:02 +0100 (CET) Delivered-To: sc22wg5@open-std.org Received: from mail.jpl.nasa.gov (mailhost.jpl.nasa.gov [128.149.139.105]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by www.open-std.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F05CC356A52 for ; Mon, 25 Jan 2016 21:54:57 +0100 (CET) Received: from [137.79.7.57] (math.jpl.nasa.gov [137.79.7.57]) by smtp.jpl.nasa.gov (Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1/Sentrion-MTA-4.3.1) with ESMTP id u0PKsrLt008329 (using TLSv1.2 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128 bits) verified NO) for ; Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:54:54 -0800 Subject: Interesting history article From: Van Snyder Reply-To: Van.Snyder@jpl.nasa.gov To: sc22wg5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Organization: Yes Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 12:54:53 -0800 Message-ID: <1453755293.11277.910.camel@math.jpl.nasa.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.3 (2.32.3-34.el6) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Source-Sender: Van.Snyder@jpl.nasa.gov X-AUTH: Authorized Sender: owner-sc22wg5@open-std.org Precedence: bulk There's an interesting article by Martin Greenfield about the history of Fortran 66 and Fortran 77 standard development at https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1982/5089/00/50890817.pdf It was presented at and appeared in the proceedings of the 1982 AFIPS National Computer Conference. Therein, he quotes from his daughter's college Fortran text: After you have learned some of the language, you will show off your sophistication by knocking its lack of elegance. Everybody does. After you learn a little bit more, you will appreciate that it is the way to really get your work done. He continued "FORTRAN has for most of [its] life been the blue-collar worker of the programming language set. What it lacked in savoir-faire and style, it returned in cost effectiveness." One of the things I hadn't appreciated was that a standard based upon Fortran II was completed before Fortran 66, which was based upon Fortran IV. Although it was the first completed draft of any programming language standard, it was never published. It was realized that Fortran II and Fortran IV were incompatible. Instead, a subset of Fortran 66, called Basic Fortran, was developed by deleting parts of the Fortran 66 standard. An interesting point is that the standard was expected to specify conformance of programs, and thereby specify a minimum of what processors were required to do. "Some nonconformance is encouraged." It's clear, nonetheless, that neither Fortran 66 nor Fortran 77 were simply standizations of existing practice (at least not in Greenfield's view). The birth of the interpretation process, and in particular the arduous process we still use today, is described. Altogether, an entirely interesting article.