2026-10-15 16:25 UTC
Today is FORTRAN’s 70th birthday; its reference manual “appeared in a glossy cover, handsomely printed, with the date October 15, 1956.” https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/FORTRAN/paper/p25-backus.pdf
(The actual software wasn’t released till the following year)
No longer fashionable but still, one of computer programming’s biggest success stories. I tip my hat.
Replies (1)
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@jonathankoren@sfba.social 2026-10-15 16:50
@timbray@cosocial.ca I knew FORTRAN 77 decades ago. The fact that column offsets were important delimiters because of punch cards was quaint in a cool way. IIRC - Columns 1-5 were punch card number. Unused in the 1990s - Column 6 was a continuation flag. If it was blank, it was a new line, but if it wasn’t then the statement from the previous line was continued on to this line - Columns 7-75? Were the program statement I think 76-80ish were some other reserved field. Maybe that was the punch card number and 1-5 was something else. It also was unused in the 1990s