🚀 go-pugleaf

> S. Ryan asks Are there concrete proposals?

Sure FORTRAN 8X. 8)

Let's see, when I was in High School I heard about Fortran II, in college
I learned Fortran IV (WATFOR AND WATFIV), I took a workstudy job
and learned about Levels G and H (OPT=2), I forgot what SCOPE had,
Univac had Fortran V and Data General have VII and we all know VII > V > IV
right? Do you think DEC or Cray or any of the other vendors (American
European or Japanese) are any better? So, what's Fortran?  Do you
believe in portability?
(You must also believe in the reply key on your mail system.)

I think we should scrap the language (COBOL, too).  I think all
compiler development of the language should stop.  Sure all science
as we know it now would stop.  Even Backus doesn't write FORTRAN.
Now you can freeze existing compilers, that's okay.  Just no fixes.
Now a few people (those who promote the conversion of dusty decks into
perfectly parallel code) would scream, as would the users.
The computer community should force the rest of the world to reevaluate
their codes and if they really need them, convert them.
Bell Labs and universities effectively did this with Unix.
I think this will benefit science as well as keep people employed.
A few token efforts will try to rewrite Fortran compilers, but all the
best compiler writers will be working to improve C, right?

This would also give other languages a chance to try their hand.
Don't think at evolution is necessary a gradual transition [Gould].
Those people and projects willing to make the transition to radically
new languages on architectures which perform significantly better
will cause colleagues to change because they won't want to be left in the
dust.  That's why people went to computers in the first place.
I think its more important to replace BASIC (used to teach physics majors
at Caltech [noted in an issue of Engineering and Science over a year ago].

You see language design is the result of the tension between expressiveness
and flexibility.  If you want help on a computer, some keyboards
actually have a "HELP" key, a single powerful key, whereas others require
4 separate stokes ('H''E''L''P' on the QWERTY keyboard).  This has never
been standardized.  This is why I don't like Programmed Function keys
Do you hit "Backspace" or "Delete?" (another relgious argument).
Do you think the PF keys are standard?

Anyways, it will never happen.
You can start breathing again.

Another gross generalization from

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
  resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers:
  "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology."
  {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene
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