Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN-like languages Date: 29 Sep 2024 19:56:58 GMT Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net ZYh8VPie+3sjP0M6ZvHQpAX4PF0QYvGSCKl+4exuKJk1BEanYK Cancel-Lock: sha1:TlKDsYA6jK8uqKLIXLKR9MCzzPM= sha256:healBohD9W/d2+7htMDIi8ObCT23Yf2Bo+WOCvYI4GQ= User-Agent: Pan/0.149 (Bellevue; 4c157ba) Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:227217 comp.os.linux.misc:58677 On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 07:22:45 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > Then along came Gnu C and everyone wanted to fix its bugs and they > could, so it just took over. gcc and Linux was an eye opener. Much of our software was developed for RS6000 systems running AIX but Linux offered a low cost alternative for development. What we found was AIX was VERY forgiving about null accesses and so forth. It took a while to fix the crashes but it definitely made the code more robust. I forget if it was 10 or 11 but gcc eventually pointed out another nasty habit in the legacy code, defining variables in hearer files. Fortunately there is a flag to get around multiple definitions. > I think the worst thing was Turbo Pascal, which convinced huge numbers > of amateurs that they could actually write code. I bought the CP/M version out of curiosity of what $50 would get you. I was impressed by the speed compared to BDS but I didn't like the language enough to do much with it.