[TUHS] Happy birthday, John Backus!

[Clem Cole]

As I said, I'm an OS type, I just sit near a number of compiler folks and
have been known to eat lunch with them - so I'm not aware of any that.
Unfortunately, about a month ago we lost the guy to ask about it (the late
Stan Whitlock), who was secretary of the Fortran standards committee for
about 30 years.   I'll try to ask Eklund and Grove (who are both retired
but I still see socially on occasion) what they remember about F and if I
learn anything I'll pass it back here.

Clem


ᐧ

On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 6:53 AM Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:

> Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> > Fortran2018 (which was release just last week BTW) is hardly the
> language I
> > learned in the early 1970s (Fortran-IV) or my father a dozen or so years
> > previous to me.
>
> One of the more obscure books I have is about "the F programming language"
> http://www.fortran.com/F/ which is the modern subset of Fortran 95. A
> curious thing about F is that it doesn't include DO WHILE; my
> understanding is that there was a faction of the Fortran standardization
> committee which was firmly against WHILE, and that was the faction that
> defined the F subset.
>
> I can't now find any information about this argument / controversy, but my
> link archive includes https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=800168.811545
> Brenda Baker's paper on converting Fortran IV programs to ratfor.
>
> Tony.
> --
> f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
> Irish Sea: Southwest 5, backing east, then becoming cyclonic later, 5 to 7,
> perhaps gale 8 later. Slight or moderate, occasionally rough later. Rain or
> showers. Good, occasionally poor.
>
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