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From: gast@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: ANSI BASIC  (really: Fortran-8X)
Message-ID: <4581@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 29-Mar-85 20:47:55 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4581
Posted: Fri Mar 29 20:47:55 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Mar-85 03:55:30 EST
References: <160@clan.UUCP>
Reply-To: gast@ucla-cs.UUCP (David Gast)
Distribution: net.lang,net.lang.f77
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 26
Summary: 

In article <160@clan.UUCP> holtz@clan.UUCP (Neal Holtz) writes:
>
>Take this as a warning -- the changes proposed for Fortran-8X make the
>changes of Fortran-77 look minimal and insignificant.  If the proposals
>are accepted, the next version of Fortran will be *MUCH* larger and
>a completely different language.  It is legitimate to say that the
>various committees are inventing a new language (that is largely
>compatible with the old).
>
>Neal Holtz
>
[the above was edited]

As the joke goes:  They don't know what the language of the nineties
will look like, but they know it will be called fortran.

Have you ever compared FORTRAN I to FORTRAN IV?  There is a huge difference.
FORTRAN I did not have subroutines, etc; it did have several features which
are no longer part of FORTRAN.

There is also a huge difference between the language definitions of 
fortran, and the symbols that are accepted by fortran compliers.
Many of the tricks 'real programmers' love are not fortran.


david gast@ucla-cs