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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 10:51:19 -0500
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Subject: Re: Error Testing
From: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com>
To: Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:58187

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Neil Cerutti <neilc@norwich.edu> wrote:
> On 2013-10-30, Albert van der Horst <albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl>
> wrote:
>> This suggests that Pascal went against established practice.
>> This is false. FORTRAN used = and that was a mistake caused by
>> the language being hacked together haphazardly.
>
> Respectfully, the designers of FORTRAN deserve more respect than
> that characterization accords.

Especially considering the environment in which they worked. The core
foundations of FORTRAN predate most language design research by a
decade or more.

From: http://math.scu.edu/~dsmolars/ma169/notesfortran.html#history

FORTRAN "0" report - 1954
FORTRAN I compiler - 1957
FORTRAN II - 1958
---> added subroutine definition and invocation
FORTRAN IV - developed 1960-62, definitive report in 1966
---> added logical IF, type declaration

In contrast, Algol wasn't first formalized until 1958. From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL#History

ALGOL was developed jointly by a committee of European and American
computer scientists in a meeting in 1958 at ETH Zurich (cf. ALGOL 58).

Lisp also got its start in 1958
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29#History)

In contrast, Python wasn't started until the late 1980s (1989, I
believe). While it owes a fair debt to ABC, that language wasn't
developed at CWI until the early 1980s.

I'd like to see the reference for "hacked together haphazardly" in
reference to FORTRAN's origins.

Skip