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> Fortran I (1957) included comments That's neat - I guess by this time Fortran programs were getting big/long enough that comments were needed.
by jamesfinlayson 4y ago
> Fortran I (1957) included comments
That's neat - I guess by this time Fortran programs were getting big/long enough that comments were needed.
- rst 4y agoAccording to every history I've ever read (most notably, Backus's talk at the first History of Programming Languages) conference, Fortran was not released outside of IBM before this 1957 release, and there wasn't a compiler debugged enough to use much before that. (This blog post is the first I've ever heard of "Fortran 0".) https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800025.1198345 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800025.1198345
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anikom15 4y agoNot exactly. At this time programs were written on punch cards. The FORTRAN ‘comment’ was just a way to get the compiler to ignore the punch card. Comments existed long before, such as notes written or typed directly onto the card.
- jamesfinlayson 4y agoAh of course - when I saw comment I got tunnel vision and completely forgot that it wasn't text on screens.