[Info-vax] FORTRAN use, was: Re: Whither VMS?

[John Wallace]

On Oct 10, 4:51 pm, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-
Earth.UFP> wrote:
> On 2009-10-09, Bob Eager <rd... at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I was always amazed at the amount of stuff written in FORTRAN. I used
> > something for monitoring users' terminals, and that was in FORTRAN.
>
> :-)
>
> I think the use of FORTRAN, regardless of platform, must have been a
> custom/tradition at one time.
>
> [My first system watchdog type program, which I wrote when I was about
> 16, was written in Fortran IV. (This was the early 1980's).]
>
> Simon.
>
> --
> Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
> Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world

In the late 70s/early 80s I worked on a team doing cross support
software for assorted micros used in aero engine control systems
(language translator, cross assembler, cross linker, etc running under
RSX11D and then IAS and eventually VMS). Back then it was a mixture of
PDP11 Fortran and the RATFOR preprocessor from Sourceforge-
predecessor, the DECUS library. RATFOR was another Kernighan
innovation. If you didn't mind a tiny tiny bit of assembler
occasionally, there wasn't much it couldn't do. Pointers? No problem
at all. Overlays, now that was something else, while it lasted.