On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
If you actually READ the email instead of making immature remarks, maybe you'd learn
something.
I didn't say apple contracted with Valtrep for their Lisa FORTRAN or even implied
anything like that. (that would be quite impossible). Don't make stupid comments
especially if you don't read the mssage.
You say my 1980s experiences with Valtrep were long after Fortran was well established
and into the decline?
Say it isn't so batman! what is this alternate universe we live in!?
oh, and your comment that Valtrep had some nice improvements on the original creation of
Fortran is just plain stupid.
Valtrep is the PREDECESSOR to Fortran, or didn't you read my message so you could
understand that. Guess not.
Fortran may have been in heavy use since the 1960s (actually it's probably more like
the mid to late 70s, but whatever),
but Valtrep was actually developed and used long before that.
Just because some company was still using Valtrep in the 1980s doesn't make it newer
you know.
Many companies use products and technologies that haven't been developed or wide use
in decades...
I have no idea who this "transnet" guy is, maybe you can ask him, maybe
he'll be nicer than I am.
In any case, the predecessor to Fortran was Valtrep. Not all such technology has
survived.
Someone months ago on this list talked about reviving a Cyber/Prime, but we never did
hear about the result if it ever got finished...
Dan.
I've read this, and the rest of the thread, and I'm sorry, but subject
to you presenting us with some pretty remarkable evidence, I think
that you don't know what you're talking about.
Apart from some very primitive assembler-style systems, FORTRAN was
the world's first high-level programming language of any kind,
followed some years later by COBOL. FORTRAN's planning dates back to
the early 1950s and it was implemented and running by the late 1950s.
It *had* no significant predecessors in a form that would really be
recognised as a high-level programming language today; before FORTRAN,
the best there was were some coding systems for simplifying the
representation of mathematical or arithmetical operations for input
into the primitive computers of the time.
*You*, Dan, may have first met FORTRAN in the 1970s, and maybe the
systems you were using had a predecessor called Valtrep that virtually
nobody else has ever heard about - but in computer terms, FORTRAN was
already a venerable grey-bearded ancient by then.
Sir, you are wrong. Completely and utterly plain dead wrong.
If you can present evidence that you are not mistaken, then you will
re-write the history of computing and of the development of
programming languages, so I urge you to do so if you can.
--
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