Re: List of software programs written in fortran (for engineers and scientists)
- From: nmm1@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:43:26 +0100 (BST)
In article <NgAhm.11905$ze1.5438@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
robin <robin_v@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Let me say it again. Those sorts of programs
were written originally in languages other than Fortran.
Do you think, for instance, that the early algorithms that appeared
in CACM were the first instances of those algorithms?
Of course not; they were written in machine code or some other
computer language five to ten years prior. Some were implementations of
algorithms that had been known for decades and solved by hand
computation.
Some where - some weren't. I know or knew some of those people, and
what they developed in, though I have been producing such algorithms
myself only since the early 1970s.
You should note that early British and European
computers in the public eye used mainly Algol and languages
other than FORTRAN. Even in the US that was the case.
Oh, God. The clarity that viewing objects from a remote distance
brings ....
English Electric KDF9 and System 4. Ferranti Atlas. ICL 1900 series.
To name but a few. All of those had Fortran compilers that were
heavily used, sometimes as the primary language.
You are also forgetting that FORTRAN codes were no more
portable than a log. Apart from the need to change the code
to run on another model of the same machine, porting to
another manufacturer involved removing/changing extensions,
in particular changing the way subroutines handled arrays,
changing any character handling, and the like.
Some of that was true in Fortran II, but it wasn't the case in
Fortran 66 (witness GLIM, Genstat, Clustan and hundreds of other
highly portable Fortran codes). But what changes to subroutine
array handling do you think were necessary?
Those computers had 1-4 KB of memory.
The amount of memory a system had (or has)
has very little to do with the complexity of algorithn that can be written.
Sigh. A lot of algorithms need more than 4,000 mathematical symbols
to express. There just ain't no way that they could be run on those
machines, because the latter's MTBF wasn't high enough to run them
in 'large machine emulation mode'.
In comparison with current machines, memories then were small.
But codes were compact.
Patent 123456789: A method of compiling an algorithmic description
using N symbols into one that uses only N/2 of the same symbols.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.
.
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