14 Oct
2005
14 Oct
'05
11:27 a.m.
Suppose you wanted to write an application for a
manufacturing
process that will, in all probability, run for the next 30 years.
[...] I/O requirements are very modest, mostly simple keyboard and
display.
I assume there also is no incredibly hairy computation going on, that
it's mostly basic arithmetic and conditional flow control, maybe with
some math functions like sin() or sqrt() thrown in.
What would you write it in?
That would depend on a number of factors. I'd probably pick C. Maybe
/bin/sh. Possibly even Lisp.
So what would it be? My vote is for FORTRAN.
I dunno. It's a reasonable contender, certainly, but I still think I'd
go for something else.
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