I don't know about FORTRAN, but I know
places where they use COBOL. I thought maybe some thoughts from an
essay from 1975 by prof. Edsger W. Dijkstra, "How do we tell
truths that might hurt?" could be interesting for a discussion
about predictions:
' FORTRAN --"the infantile
disorder"--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly
inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today:
it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. '
'The use of COBOL cripples the mind;
its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.'
And there is more:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/ewd498.html
On Feb 14, 2007, at 15:01, bryan rasmussen wrote:
> On 2/14/07, Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> wrote:
>> Dead or dying. CORBA is dead. DOS, Cobol and Fortran are dying. I
>> teach
>> at an engineering school, and I'm one of the few people there
>> (including
>> among the faculty) who knows anything about Fortran. I don't know
>> anyone
>> who still uses it, though probably there are still a few physics
>> professors who are happily coding away in Fortran, but they'll all
>> retire in the next few few years.
>
> I was at a party about 3 years ago where a 22 year old physics student
> told me that the only language he knew was Fortran and it was quite
> widely used in his discipline. I think it had something to do with
> astronomy.
Yes, as far as I know cosmologist still use loads of Fortran, and
from what I'm told new libraries are being added with some frequency.
The last one I asked even said she liked it :)
--
Robin Berjon
........................................................................
Change is inevitable except from a vending machine.
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