Fortran (Was Re: PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration) (Resubmitting without attachment)

[Chuck Guzis]

I was preparing to make the leap and buy my first personal computer--a
PDP-8/E back in the day.   The attraction was not just the low price of
around $5000, but the fact that there was FORTRAN available for it.  DEC
made a big deal of that in their promotions.

Wrote an emulator for it (in FORTRAN, of course) and still have my copy
of Introduction to Programming".  Never got the machine, however--other
things got in the way.

I still routinely deal with FORTRAN (capitalize the name for dialects
earlier than F90).   It's still hard to beat for a portable, fast
mathematical HLL.  The big competitor back in the day from Europe,
Algol, appears to have disappeared from collective consciousness.

--Chuck