Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cs.yale.edu!zenith-steven From: zenith-steven@cs.yale.edu (Steven Ericsson Zenith) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: He's not the only one at it again! Message-ID: <25630@cs.yale.edu> Date: 25 Jul 90 17:15:48 GMT References: <1990Jul21.004616.649@Stardent.COM> <388@e2big.mko.dec.com> <1990Jul23.231717.2766@cs.UAlberta.CA> <2400@l.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: news@cs.yale.edu Reply-To: zenith-steven@cs.yale.edu (Steven Ericsson Zenith) Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Lines: 64 In article <2400@l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: |>Mathematics is pure grammar, but not philosophy of any kind. I disagree |>about the existence part, however. Computer science is the same sort of |>thing. From Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary: Mathematics: The science of numbers and their operations, interrelations, combinations, generalizations, and abstractions and of space configurations and their structure, measurement, transformations and generalizations. Philosophy: [...] 3 [...] b: a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought <~ of science>. |>> It was a pretty good observation made by whoever in the |>> 50's that you could write programs with a consistent programmer interface, |>> but which ran on different machines. Hence FORTRAN. |> |>Not according to the facts. Oh .. really? |> The only language I know of in any remotely |>wide usage at the time Fortran was created was (ugh) COBOL. Fortran was |>created specifically for casual programming on the IBM 704. It was only |>after it was produced that it was observed that it could be used on other |>machines. The extremely poor attempt to produce a machine-independent |>computational language ALGOL was the followup. From Juliussen and Juliussen's Computer Industry Almanac: 1944 Grace Murray Hopper starts a distinquished career in the computer industry by being the first programmer for the Mark 1. 1953 IBM ships its first stored program computer, the 701. [...] 1954 FORTRAN is created by John Backus at IBM following his 1953 SPEEDCO program. Harlan Herrick runs first successful FORTRAN program. 1954 Gene Amdahl develops the first operating system, used on IBM 704. 1957 FORTRAN is introduced. 1958 ALGOL, first called IAL (International Algebraic Language), is presented in Zurich. 1959 COBOL is defined by the Conference on Data Systems Languages (Codasyl) based on Grace Hoppers's Flow-Matic. [Sorry no earlier mention of Flow-Matic] |> The extremely poor attempt to produce a machine-independent |>computational language ALGOL was the followup. This is an unjustifiable comment, since ALGOL has had a far more profound influence on the design of programming languages than either FORTRAN or COBOL. |>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 |>Phone: (317)494-6054 |>hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet) {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!cik(UUCP) -- Steven Ericsson Zenith * email: zenith@cs.yale.edu Fax: (203) 466 2768 | voice: (203) 432 1278 | "The world is a sacred vessel; It is not something that can be acted upon. | | Those who act on it destroy it; Those who hold on to it lose it." | Yale University Dept of Computer Science 51 Prospect St New Haven CT 06520 USA