[TUHS] RIP John Backus

[crossd@gmail.com (Dan Cross)]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 5:07 PM, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
> I do remember, one of the big issues with UNIX being picked up into the EE
> department was the lack of a 'proper Fortran.'    As much as modern
> languages like C and Pascal were clearly the direction, a lot of professors
> had a lot of code in FORTRAN they wanted to run.
>
> So now I live in a world were the best FORTRAN compilers are UNIX based
> and I don't write with FORTRAN anymore.   I still have a ton of respect for
> those that do and even more for the wizards like Paul and co that have
> spent their careers creating compilers for FORTRAN that have spanned such
> changes in the underlying system hardware, as well as the language itself
> and keep those same user codes getting correct answers and using the
> hardware as well as can be.
>

And to bring this back around to Unix, here are a couple of random
questions....

First, in Dennis Ritchie's paper, "The Development of the C Language" (
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html) he mentions the early
days of Unix, Ken taking Doug McIlroy's implementation of "TMG" on the
PDP-7 as a challenge and deciding to produce a "systems programming
language." The first effort was, apparently, "a rapidly scuttled attempt at
Fortran", followed by B.

I'm curious at the FORTRAN effort: what was that about, where did it come
from, and why was it abandoned?

Second, 7th Edition came with the "f77" command implementing
(unsurprisingly) Fortran 77. A paper by Stu Feldman and Peter Weinberger in
Volume 2 describes the compiler and includes this line: "This is believed
to be the first complete Fortran 77 system to be implemented." (
https://s3.amazonaws.com/plan9-bell-labs/7thEdMan/vol2/f77.txt)

Was that true? Notable in this paper is mention that the Fortran compiler
can drive the backend of either Ritchie's PDP-11 C compiler *or* Johnson's
portable C compiler. What was the local story? Did this see local use?

        - Dan C.
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