[SPG_Active_Members] Wired.com: Oct. 15, 1956: Fortran Forever Changes Computing’s Fortunes

[Van Snyder]

On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 17:37 -0700, Paul McJones wrote:
> http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/10/1015fortran-launch
> 
> 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 ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1601-N1650/N1648.pdf.
Also "Fortran 95/2003 Explained" by Metcalf, Reid and Cohen.

2008: SPMD parallel programming -- See
ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1751-N1800/N1787.pdf -- will be familiar to
those familiar with UPC, which got its inspiration from the predecessor
of this project, originally called F-- at Cray.  Performance
enhancements, more intrinsic functions, I/O improvements, ....  See
ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1701-N1750/N1735.pdf