[SPG_Active_Members] Wired.com: Oct. 15, 1956: Fortran ForeverChanges Computing's Fortunes

[Ronald Mak]

 Hi, Karae.
 Yes, I have been bringing my students to the Museum. My fifth class
will be visiting Saturday, Nov. 14. Students are always fascinated by
experiencing the restored IBM 1401, various data processing equipment,
and the Babbage Engine all operational again. They also enjoy seeing
the other exhibits and hearing the docents' stories. At the very
least, they'll appreciate their laptops and iPhones more. See
http://cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/archive/CS160-Spring2008/fieldtrip/index.html
[1] for photos from a visit last year.
 I was warned by other faculty members that computer science students
are not interested in history. But I prove them wrong every time the
students see the old "compusaurs" come back to life. The CS dept would
like me teach a semester-long "History of Modern Computing" class tied
to the Museum, but with all the budget cuts in the California state
universities, that won't happen soon. (Does anyone want to sponsor a
chair in the San Jose State University CS dept? I work cheap!) I
taught a 90-minute seminar on the 1401 and data processing last
summer: See http://cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/1401/ [2]
 In my compiler class, I do discuss the challenges that the early
compiler writers faced. For example, the Fortran compiler for the 1401
worked in 4K of memory and required up to 63 passes. See
http://cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/lectures/IBM1401FORTRANCompiler.pdf. [3] My
students were complaining that I'm making them write a 3-pass compiler
in Java on laptops with 2 GB of memory.
 -- Ron
 P.S. I've been a volunteer at CHM for nearly 10 years, lately mostly
with the 1401 restoration. I'm trying to find funding for the Museum
to hire CS students from SJSU to work as interns. It helps that I'm
involved with both institutions. I can keep you posted on my efforts.
I'll try to stop by your office and say hi the next time I'm at the
Museum.
 On Thu 15/10/09  6:21 AM , "Karae Lisle" klisle at computerhistory.org
sent:
 Hi Ron
 You should definitely bring your students to the Museum, and/or
encourage them to visit and learn.......
 Great story - I coded FORTRAN at FSU on a Cray - brand new terminals
in 1980...card reader was over in the corner with the electrical cord
wrapped around the leg....
 Karae
 ________________________________
 From:  on behalf of Ronald Mak
 Sent: Wed 10/14/2009 9:25 PM
 To: Van Snyder; Paul McJones
 Cc: 
 Subject: RE: [SPG_Active_Members] Wired.com: Oct. 15, 1956: Fortran
ForeverChanges Computing's Fortunes
 After my "day job" at IBM Research, I teach compiler writing and
software
 engineering classes at San Jose State University. For your
amusement, I've
 attached an e-mail that I sent last year to some of my faculty
colleagues
 about a "Fortran incident" in my software engineering class.
 Of course, in my compiler class, I teach my students how to use BNF.
 -- Ron
 P.S.  Truly bizarre fact: I have John Backus's old office at IBM
Almaden
 Research Center.
 P.P.S. No, there isn't a plaque by the door. In fact, you wouldn't
know that
 he ever worked here if it weren't for his former colleagues
remembering him
 (and telling me that I have the honor of inhabiting his old office).
 Ronald Mak
 Research Staff Member
 PERCS Petascale Storage Subsystem
 IBM Almaden Research Center
 Department of Computer Science
 San Jose State University
 > The reporter contacted me to ask for permission to use a
photograph
 > from a match book cover John Backus had given to me, and also had
a
 > few questions which I was happy to try to answer. The resultant
story
 > has links to the Fortran archives at CHM and SPG.
 To enlarge on Abell's "the propellerheads aren't done with
Fortran...."
 Since 1966, the year in which the standard that Computer Science
professors
 love to bash was published, there have been four revisions (and
those same
 professors gleefully proclaim that they're completely ignorant of
their
 contents).  A fifth will be published shortly.
 Fortran standards are referenced by the year their technical content
is
 frozen, so the newest one will be called Fortran 2008.  ISO takes a
while to
 publish.  Fortran hasn't been spelt with all caps since 1990, so
Wired.com
 inadvertently got it right.
 1977: Character variables, better support for I/O, structured
programming,
 ....
 1990: Modules, arrays, dynamic storage, free source form, ....  See
"Fortran
 90 Explained" by Metcalf and Reid.
 1995: Mostly minor fixups  See "Fortran 90/95 Explained" by Metcalf
and
 Reid.
 2003: Object oriented programming, C interoperability, Stream I/O,
IEEE
 arithmetic, .... See 

Links:
------
[1]
http://cs.sjsu.edu/%7Emak/archive/CS160-Spring2008/fieldtrip/index.html
[2] http://cs.sjsu.edu/%7Emak/1401/
[3] http://cs.sjsu.edu/%7Emak/lectures/IBM1401FORTRANCompiler.pdf.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: ../attachments/20091015/019db23a/attachment-0001.html