[J3] [BULK] Re: Niklaus Wirth

[Toon Moene]

On 1/8/24 21:41, Van Snyder via J3 wrote:

> On Mon, 2024-01-08 at 20:23 +0100, Toon Moene via J3 wrote:

>> Of course, all that programming we physics
>> students would do would be in Fortran, but the "lab" work in "computer
>> science" was in an interpreted version of Pascal.
> 
> The IBM 1401 FORTRAN-II compiler produced interpreted code for floating 
> point. It was actually quite well done, with decimal arithmetic from six 
> to 20 digits, and two guard digits, but no symmetric rounding.

I didn't know that. It has for a long time been my "expectation" that 
Fortran, that grew up while "computers" were humans, could allow more 
than just two "sizes" of reals ... (I still have to comb through my copy 
of "Hidden Figures" whether that argument comes up).

But it seems that by Fortran 66, this "innovation" was squashed ...

Thanks for some history lesson :-)

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon at moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands