3 ms·

Didn't early versions of Fortran precede Algol 60? I also thought Algol came out of Europe more than N America and Fortran the reverse? Or is Fortran consider

Didn't early versions of Fortran precede Algol 60? I also thought Algol came out of Europe more than N America and Fortran the reverse? Or is Fortran considered what the Neanderthals used before they all died off?

jhbadger 5y ago
Yes, Fortran was earlier -- in 1957. But ALGOL introduced structured programming with code blocks and programmer defined functions. These were later added to Fortran, but Fortran was originally structured like 1980s BASIC -- with GOTOs to various line numbers.
- jleyank 5y ago
  According to google, Fortran II in 1958 introduced functions and subroutines. Structure, yeah, and non-numeric statement labels and more sensible if's.
tuatoru 5y ago
Also, Simula preceded Self by several years. Simula started as Algol with object-orientation, but it deserves mention for introducing the ideas.
adrian_b 5y ago
The first version of Fortran was defined internally at IBM in November 1954 and introduced as a public product in October 1956. In 1958, IBM introduced Fortran II, which added user-defined functions and procedures. In the 1956 Fortran, a user could add custom functions, but they had to be written in assembly language, not in Fortran. During 1958, several proposals for IAL, later renamed ALGOL, were discussed by American and European teams, but the final 1958 report was closer to the European proposals than to the American proposals. One year and a half later, the ALGOL 60 report had few changes compared to the 1958 version, but those were important changes, e.g. the block structure requiring stack memory and allowing recursive procedures or the while-do loop, besides the for loop. So yes, Fortran was a real usable product in 1956, 4 years before 1960, when 3 other major programming languages were introduced, LISP I, COBOL 60 and ALGOL 60. However Fortran was very primitive and it had even less capabilities than the Superplan of Heinz Rutishauser from 1951/1952. While Fortran brought little conceptual progress, it had a performant compiler for that time, it was well documented and easily available for anyone who could afford to lease an IBM computer. Still Fortran belongs to the prehistory of programming languages, because the vast majority of features from any modern programming language comes from ALGOL 60 and LISP I, with very few from Fortran and Cobol. Most later improvements in programming languages happened until the introduction of ALGOL 68, then an even smaller number were introduced in the next decade, until Ada (1979) and C++ (1984) and an even smaller number of improvements are more recent than that. Unfortunately that does not mean that the modern programming languages are very good, because none of the currently popular languages includes all the best features of the older programming languages. Due to various historical accidents that could not be corrected later without breaking backward compatibility, when comparing a modern popular programming language with some language from 50 years ago, the modern language will be better from many points of view, but it will also sometimes be worse in various details. For example, all C-like languages are worse at handling arrays than Fortran II was in 1958.

jhbadger 5y ago

Yes, Fortran was earlier -- in 1957. But ALGOL introduced structured programming with code blocks and programmer defined functions. These were later added to Fortran, but Fortran was originally structured like 1980s BASIC -- with GOTOs to various line numbers.

jleyank 5y ago
According to google, Fortran II in 1958 introduced functions and subroutines. Structure, yeah, and non-numeric statement labels and more sensible if's.

tuatoru 5y ago

Also, Simula preceded Self by several years. Simula started as Algol with object-orientation, but it deserves mention for introducing the ideas.

adrian_b 5y ago

The first version of Fortran was defined internally at IBM in November 1954 and introduced as a public product in October 1956. In 1958, IBM introduced Fortran II, which added user-defined functions and procedures. In the 1956 Fortran, a user could add custom functions, but they had to be written in assembly language, not in Fortran. During 1958, several proposals for IAL, later renamed ALGOL, were discussed by American and European teams, but the final 1958 report was closer to the European proposals than to the American proposals. One year and a half later, the ALGOL 60 report had few changes compared to the 1958 version, but those were important changes, e.g. the block structure requiring stack memory and allowing recursive procedures or the while-do loop, besides the for loop. So yes, Fortran was a real usable product in 1956, 4 years before 1960, when 3 other major programming languages were introduced, LISP I, COBOL 60 and ALGOL 60. However Fortran was very primitive and it had even less capabilities than the Superplan of Heinz Rutishauser from 1951/1952. While Fortran brought little conceptual progress, it had a performant compiler for that time, it was well documented and easily available for anyone who could afford to lease an IBM computer. Still Fortran belongs to the prehistory of programming languages, because the vast majority of features from any modern programming language comes from ALGOL 60 and LISP I, with very few from Fortran and Cobol. Most later improvements in programming languages happened until the introduction of ALGOL 68, then an even smaller number were introduced in the next decade, until Ada (1979) and C++ (1984) and an even smaller number of improvements are more recent than that. Unfortunately that does not mean that the modern programming languages are very good, because none of the currently popular languages includes all the best features of the older programming languages. Due to various historical accidents that could not be corrected later without breaking backward compatibility, when comparing a modern popular programming language with some language from 50 years ago, the modern language will be better from many points of view, but it will also sometimes be worse in various details. For example, all C-like languages are worse at handling arrays than Fortran II was in 1958.