30 Oct
2015
30 Oct
'15
2:29 a.m.
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages
To keep the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts going, NASA's new hire has to know
FORTRAN and assembly languages.
?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-e…
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
30 Oct
30 Oct
8:28 a.m.
On Oct 30, 2015, at 5:29 AM, Liam Proven <lproven
at gmail.com> wrote:
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages
To keep the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts going, NASA's new hire has to know
FORTRAN and assembly languages.
?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-e…
Neat. I would think that a large fraction of the membership of this list is qualified for
that job. Assembly language programming, on a machine with such large memory as 64k?
Sure. Fortran? Algol? Even those who don't know can likely learn it easily.
The key requirement is the mindset needed to work on old computers, with (by today's
standards) slow execution and small memory. That's something most of us have, either
from actually doing it, or from being interested in it.
paul
8:54 a.m.
On Oct 30, 2015, at 10:28 AM, Paul Koning
<paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
Additionally a QSL Card from Oort Cloud or Kuiper Belt to hang in the Ham Shack would be
nice.
Jerry
wb9mri
On Oct 30, 2015, at 5:29 AM, Liam Proven
<lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old Languages
To keep the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts going, NASA's new hire has to know
FORTRAN and assembly languages.
?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-e…
Neat. I would think that a large fraction of the membership of this list is qualified
for that job. Assembly language programming, on a machine with such large memory as 64k?
Sure. Fortran? Algol? Even those who don't know can likely learn it easily.
The key requirement is the mindset needed to work on old computers, with (by today's
standards) slow execution and small memory. That's something most of us have, either
from actually doing it, or from being interested in it.
paul
9:46 a.m.
On 30 October 2015 at 16:28, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
Neat. I would think that a large fraction of the
membership of this list is qualified for that job.
That's why I posted it! :-)
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
9:01 a.m.
On 10/30/2015 02:29 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old
Languages
I think the demise of FORTRAN is overstated. That there is an X3 group
still advancing the language attests to that. While FORTRAN may be a
60-year old language, Fortran is not.
As far as assembly, I don't believe that it's a dead language. When you
need simple, rugged, low-power hardware, it's still a very good way to go.
--Chuck
9:35 a.m.
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 09:01:38AM -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 10/30/2015 02:29 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
Joe still loves his Fortran. In fact, many Scientist/Engineers seem to
still use Fortran.
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/i
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In
60-Year-Old Languages
I think the demise of FORTRAN is overstated. That there is an X3 group
still advancing the language attests to that. While FORTRAN may be a
60-year old language, Fortran is not.
As far as assembly, I don't believe that it's a dead language. When you
need simple, rugged, low-power hardware, it's still a very good way to go.
--Chuck
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
9:39 a.m.
I work in scientific computing and occasionally still see FORTRAN codes
around. Not totally dead yet ... You'd be surprised how many, say, R
libraries are written in FORTRAN ...
What concerns me is the amount of code these days that is being written in
languages that has no formal standard at all. Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, the
list goes on ... I wonder how much of it will still be useful in ten or
fifteen years.
Best,
Sean
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 12:35 PM, Diane Bruce <db at db.net> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 09:01:38AM -0700, Chuck Guzis
wrote:
On 10/30/2015 02:29 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
Joe still loves his Fortran. In fact, many Scientist/Engineers seem to
still use Fortran.
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/i
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In
60-Year-Old Languages
I think the demise of FORTRAN is overstated. That there is an X3 group
still advancing the language attests to that. While FORTRAN may be a
60-year old language, Fortran is not.
As far as assembly, I don't believe that it's a dead language. When you
need simple, rugged, low-power hardware, it's still a very good way to
go.
--Chuck
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
10:24 a.m.
On Oct 30, 2015, at 12:39 PM, Sean Caron <scaron at
umich.edu> wrote:
...
What concerns me is the amount of code these days that is being written in
languages that has no formal standard at all. Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, the
list goes on ... I wonder how much of it will still be useful in ten or
fifteen years.
Good question. Then again, only a few languages I can think of had a formal standard from
the start: Algol 68 and Algol 68, plus probably Ada (don't know that one well enough
to be definite about it).
All the others were either never standardized, or standardized long after the fact. The
ones you list are examples of the former, as are many others (PL/I for example?); examples
of the latter include Fortran, C, APL, COBOL, Pascal, and presumably many others as well.
Also, being useable 10-15 years from now requires the availability of compatible
implementations, or enough information to allow them to be created. Standardization is
only very loosely connected to that. For one thing, standards generally change what
existed before (indeed, this is often a deliberate part of the process). ANSI C is not
compatible with K&R C, though converting one to the other isn't terribly hard, and
supporting both isn't either. Similarly, ANSI Fortran isn't FORTRAN II. Nor is
Python 3 the same as Python 1.5. But all of these are manageable conversion problems.
For that matter, there's translation. You don't need a standard for the
implementation language of some algorithm; it suffices (at the cost of some labor) to have
an understanding of whatever language it was written in, and the knowledge to translate
that to a currently available language.
paul
9:52 a.m.
On 10/30/2015 09:35 AM, Diane Bruce wrote:
Joe still loves his Fortran. In fact, many
Scientist/Engineers seem
to still use Fortran.
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/i
Sorry, that URL gets me to a 404.
Just the other day, I converted a 9 track tape from the 90s from Ft.
George Meade that involved antenna design software. It was FORTRAN and
compiled quite nicely under f77.
So not as uncommon as people think, perhaps.
--Chuck
10:02 a.m.
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 09:52:24AM -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 10/30/2015 09:35 AM, Diane Bruce wrote:
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/
Removing the spurious 'i' is all it took. Sorry about that. His 'go back
to home page' added an index.html which isn't needed and I failed
to remove it all.
Joe still loves his Fortran. In fact, many
Scientist/Engineers seem
to still use Fortran.
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/i
Sorry, that URL gets me to a 404.
Just the other day, I converted a 9 track tape from the 90s from Ft.
George Meade that involved antenna design software. It was FORTRAN and
compiled quite nicely under f77.
cool!
So not as uncommon as people think, perhaps.
--Chuck
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
10:17 a.m.
On Oct 30, 2015, at 1:02 PM, Diane Bruce <db at
db.net> wrote:
> ...
> Just the other day, I converted a 9 track tape from the 90s from Ft.
> George Meade that involved antenna design software. It was FORTRAN and
> compiled quite nicely under f77.
NEC 2?
I've had a copy of NEC-2, in Fortran, for perhaps 2 decades now. I also got the
manual from government archives. Works nicely.
paul
10:42 a.m.
On 10/30/2015 10:17 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
NEC 2?
I've had a copy of NEC-2, in Fortran, for perhaps 2 decades now. I
also got the manual from government archives. Works nicely.
No, something called FERM--developed at Lincoln Labs and distributed
through USG, by all appearances.
--Chuck
10:45 a.m.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I think the demise of FORTRAN is overstated. That
there is an X3 group still
advancing the language attests to that. While FORTRAN may be a 60-year old
language, Fortran is not.
Which one is NASA looking for? FORTRAN/Fortran in general, or expertise
with the variants from half a century ago?
As far as assembly, I don't believe that it's
a dead language. When you need
simple, rugged, low-power hardware, it's still a very good way to go.
The rumors of its demise have been around for a long time.
2 or 3 decades ago, the folk controlling lower division undergraduate
"Computer Science" at UC (pronounced "UCK") Berkeley, Clancy and
Harvey,
declared, "Assembly language is dead! Nobody will ever program in it
again.", and shifted their program to Scheme/Lisp. They also
discontinued any beginning courses in C, claiming that anybody entering
college for Computer Science should/would "already know C".
That increased UC Berkeley student enrollment in the C classes that I
taught at Merritt College (Peralta Community College District), and our
Fortram classes got a lot of UC Berkeley students who had Fortran as a
degree requirement in various science departments.
Philippe Kahn said, about his "Turbo-Assembler", that "Assembly language
is not for programming; it is for debugging".
I have to admit that assembly language may no longer be a great career
path, but there will always be need for some levels of hand optimization.
Note: I realize that some may feel a need to differentiate between machine
language programming and assembly language programming. I acknowledge
the difference, but feel that in this context they can be lumped together.
It is always amusing how desperate some peop[le seem to be to declare the
demise of any systems that they aren't involved in.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
10:38 a.m.
Liam Proven wrote:
?Why NASA Needs a Programmer Fluent In 60-Year-Old
Languages
To keep the Voyager 1 and 2 crafts going, NASA's new hire has to know
FORTRAN and assembly languages.
?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-e…
Does anyone have any idea as to the actual hardware platform?
I used an IBM 7094 II back around 1965 using both FORTRAN
and assembly language, but that was only 50 years ago.
There was no operating system, just a batch stream of one job
at a time. All I/O was via a 1401 for both input and output.
But it did work well for that era.
Jerome Fine
9:55 a.m.
On 10/30/2015 10:38 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
There was no operating system, just a batch stream of
one job at a
time. All I/O was via a 1401 for both input and output.
IBSYS and/or FMS don't qualify as operating systems? The usage of the
1401 to do unit record I/O was the original application of the term
"SPOOL". Many use the term today, uncapitalized, without realizing that
it's an acronym.
--Chuck
10:50 a.m.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
Does anyone have any idea as to the actual hardware
platform?
I used an IBM 7094 II back around 1965 using both FORTRAN
and assembly language, but that was only 50 years ago.
There was no operating system, just a batch stream of one job
at a time. All I/O was via a 1401 for both input and output.
But it did work well for that era.
In 1970, at Goddard Space Flight Center, Space Sciences Data Center, we
used FORTRAN on a 7094 with a 360/30 for I/O. But we also used FORTRAN
on several 360/9x machines, and sometimes APL on time sharing (selectric
terminal)
I wonder when the 7094s finally got retired.
11:08 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred
Cisin
Sent: 30 October 2015 17:51
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Know any Fortran programmers who need a more interesting job?
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
Has anyone actually managed to find this job posting? I had a quick look on
the main Nasa site and also on the JPL site, and couldn't find it at all. I
am curious to read it.
Regards
Rob
Does anyone have any idea as to the actual
hardware platform?
I used an IBM 7094 II back around 1965 using both FORTRAN and assembly
language, but that was only 50 years ago.
There was no operating system, just a batch stream of one job at a
time. All I/O was via a 1401 for both input and output.
But it did work well for that era.
In 1970, at Goddard Space Flight Center, Space Sciences Data Center, we
used FORTRAN on a 7094 with a 360/30 for I/O. But we also used FORTRAN
on several 360/9x machines, and sometimes APL on time sharing (selectric
terminal)
I wonder when the 7094s finally got retired.
3116
days inactive
3116
days old
16 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
db＠db.net -
jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to -
jsw＠ieee.org -
lproven＠gmail.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com -
scaron＠umich.edu