Talk:Fortran

FORTRAN (I)

While it's unfortunately in storage, one of my proud possessions is a FORTRAN manual for the IBM 709. It isn't called FORTRAN I because no one had yet contemplated a II. No, I never wrote for a 709; the closest I got was converting IBM 7094 code to run on the UNIVAC 1108.

There are some interesting, obsolete features. The FREQUENCY statement preceded optimizing compilers, and indeed PRAGMA or other human-judgment features in other languages. FREQUENCY follows an IF statement, and expresses the programmer's expectation of the frequency with which each branch will be taken. The compiler would use this information to order the comparisons in machine code. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:20, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

When I started programming (in 1967) Fortran was considered a vulgar American language (at least at many Dutch Universities), so I was forced to use Algol 60. I started programming Fortran in earnest at Duke University (on the IBM 360-75 of the Triangle Research Center) in 1969. This was in Fortran 66. "Frequency" had gone from the language, PRAGMA was still present in the CDC dialect, but not in IBM's. When I later returned to Holland, mathematicians had lost the language battle to the physicists and engineers and Fortran was available everywhere in the country. --Paul Wormer 05:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)