[Info-vax] [OT] Current students apparently can't read Fortran code...

[gah4]

On Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 6:27:57 PM UTC-7, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> On 4/13/22 6:54 PM, Bob Gezelter wrote: 

(snip)

> > FORTRAN II (IBM 1620, circa 1960, 20K digits of storage) had
> > full subroutines and functions.

> OK. I read the Wikipedia article wrong, specifically with regard to 
> functions and subroutines. The fact they had them doesn't mean they 
> were used.

They were used, but there are plenty of stories about very big subroutines,
so, looking at the code, you might think they didn't know about them.

I am sometimes surprised at how, even as computers get faster, there
is so much work to make subroutines calls more efficient.  One reason
for the large subroutines might be that subroutine calls were slower in the
early days.  Though some compilers generate less efficient code as
subroutines get larger.