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From: rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
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Subject: Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: 27 Feb 2025 02:14:50 GMT
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On Wed, 26 Feb 2025 15:17:51 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

> c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
>> On 2/25/25 2:33 PM, vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>>> I went from DEC20 FORTRAN to pdp11 Basic (it had matrix math) to DEC
>>> SAIL (Algol) to Pascal to C to Python
>> 
>>   Sounds familiar ... though 'C' became available on the PDP-11s (was
>>   writ on them). Still pref Pascal over Python where possible.
>> 
>>> Assembler and COBOL were needed but avoided
>> 
>>   Better ASM than COBOL
> 
> Depends on what you want to do. Assembler is a lot more fun, but I
> wouldn’t want to write a payroll system in it.

I recall one project that used a macroassembler to create sort of a subset 
of C. My reaction was 'Okay, but why?'.  I suppose it made sense in an era 
when people felt compelled to write their own editors. Or, Gods forbid, 
they learned enough about lex and yacc to be really dangerous.