[CentOS] OT: programming language for morons (newbie friendly language in Open Source world)

Lamar Owen lowen at pari.edu
Mon Dec 13 18:17:58 UTC 2010


On Monday, December 13, 2010 12:54:35 pm Benjamin Franz wrote:
> But seriously, there are a fair number of (mostly older) languages that 
> are fairly picky about whitespace. I still remember writing FORTRAN.

We still have one application running on a VAXStation 4000 being maintained in FORTRAN (controlls a 7,000 pound astronomical photographic plate 'scanner' (aka a microdensitometer) using an IEEE488 connected laser position interferometer servo system and a SCSI-connected CAMAC crate for general purpose I/O and the A to D pixel photometer readout).  The FCC even did web cgi programs in FORTRAN.  And there are a number of scientific packages still using FORTRAN that are still being developed and maintained.  It is far from a dead language, and is still being taught as a major scientific language.  FORTRAN and LABview are rather common in academia, as is Matlab.

We're looking at porting the VS4000's FORTRAN code to C on CentOS, but getting the CAMAC Linux drivers (uses the SCSI generic interface) to work has been a challenge.



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