16 Mar
2017
16 Mar
'17
7:26 p.m.
Who was it who said, "FORTRAN is more portable
than syphilis"
I found it!
I thought Djikstra, but it turned out to be Stan Kelly-Bootle:
"The definition of FORTRAN from the "Devil's DP Dictionary", by
Stan Kelly-Bootle:
"FORTRAN n. [Acronym for FORmula TRANslating system.]
One of the earliest languages of any real height, level-wise, developed
out
of Speedcoding by Backus and Ziller for the IBM/704 in the mid 1950s in
order to boost the sale of 80-column cards to engineers.
In spite of regular improvements(including a recent option called
'STRUCTURE'), it remains popular among engineers but despised elsewhere.
Many rivals, with the benefit of hindsight, have crossed swords with
the old workhorse ! Yet FORTRAN gallops on, warts and all, more
transportable than syphilis, fired by a bottomless pit of working
subprograms. Lacking the compact power of APL, the intellectually
satisfying
elegance of ALGOL 68, the didactic incision of Pascal, and the spurned
universality of PL/I, FORTRAN survives, nay, FLOURISHES, thanks to a
superior investmental inertia."