From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Feb 16 22:54:14 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from lariat.org (lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4315837B419 for ; Sat, 16 Feb 2002 22:54:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from mustang.lariat.org (IDENT:ppp0.lariat.org@lariat.org [12.23.109.2]) by lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA27736; Sat, 16 Feb 2002 23:53:54 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20020216134025.01cfd980@localhost> X-Sender: brett@localhost X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 13:45:27 -0700 To: aw1@stade.co.uk, "freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG" From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: Fortran (was Re: Why is Python slower on FreeBSD than Windows?) In-Reply-To: <20020216022307.B79138@titus.hanley.stade.co.uk> References: <20020215145841.O33755-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> <3C6D22C2.268E6915@pythonemproject.com> <20020215145841.O33755-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org At 07:23 PM 2/15/2002, Adrian Wontroba wrote: >"Real Programmers can write Fortran in any language." To quote from an >old, and quite funny, list of things that Real Programmers do and don't >do. > >It was my first language. Fortunately I was soon introduced to Algol. Funny thing about Algol: When Algol-60 (which had some features that neither FORTRAN nor C has, such as range and bounds checking) for UNIVAC hardware was completed, scientists at Case Institute of Technology (where I did my undergraduate degree) ported some old government code over and tried to run it. The machine immediately reported runtime errors. Variables were undefined; subscripts were going out of bounds; the results that were produced if the errors were ignored were virtually random. And now the punch line: the code they'd ported had been used in the design of nuclear weapons. I trust neither FORTRAN nor C to this day. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message