Portability of Fortran - was Re: Architectural diversity - was Re: Pair of Twiggys

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-03-17 2:56 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> On 03/17/2017 11:41 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
>
>> Not quite true.  ALGOL was the first choice for a couple of
>> architectures: Electrologica X8, and the Burroughs 48-bit mainframes.
>> And I supposed you could claim that status for Bliss in the case of
>> VAXen, though in a different sense there was a whole set of high
>> level languages that were there day 1 because the architecture
>> envisioned all of them (and any combination of them).
>
> Well, okay--the European-American divide must be taken into account--and
> the Burroughs B5000 architecture was sui generis.
>
> But by and large, FORTRAN, at least in North America, was the first
> language of choice in implementation--after assembly, if one can call
> assembly a language--many would call it "symbolic coding"; using symbols
> instead of numeric addresses.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
>
>

I came across a typical example of how Fortran was used as lingua 
franca, just yesterday, in a book titled "Knapsack Problems - Algorithms 
and Computer Implementations" (Silvano Martello, Paolo Toth), published 
1990.

The Preface includes the words:

   "The Fortran codes implementing the most effective methods are 
provided in the included diskette. The codes are portable on virtually 
any computer, extensively commented and---hopefully---easy to use."

--Toby