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The 1957 paper, The FORTRAN Automatic Coding System¹, begins: The FORTRAN project was begun in the summer of 1954. The paper is worth reading in full. The

by kps 13y ago

The 1957 paper, The FORTRAN Automatic Coding System¹, begins: The FORTRAN project was begun in the summer of 1954. The paper is worth reading in full. The compiler was probably the first in the modern sense (and the term was not used for such — the paper refers to it as a ‘translator’) yet was remarkably sophisticated, including things like common subexpression elimination, strength reduction, flow analysis, and register allocation for the 704's three precious index registers. On the other hand the section on expression parsing shows its age; it's trivial today, but recursive grammars were not then yet understood. ¹http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Fortran/102663113.05.01.acc.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Fortran/10...

dalke 13y ago
"it's trivial today, but recursive grammars were not then yet understood" I like the parenthetical line from http://rules-of-the-game.com/com002-memoir1.htm http://rules-of-the-game.com/com002-memoir1.htm , which describes some people who are trying to understand the FORTRAN compiler based on analysis of its assembly code. I quote more than that line to give context: > As we read the code, we flow-charted. As the flow charts grew, we Scotch-taped page to page, since we didn't know enough yet to be able to identify distinct modules or procedures that could safely be relegated to separate pages. The code didn't lend itself very readily to such treatment, in any case; this was, remember, a vast, undifferentiated torrent of assembly-language code, whose main organizing principle was not "while" or "until," but rather "Oh, and another thing!" (If you take this as a dig at the FORTRAN designers and implementers, you are badly mistaken; that would be like criticizing Lewis & Clark for not taking Interstate 80 when traveling west.)

by kps 13y ago

dalke 13y ago

"it's trivial today, but recursive grammars were not then yet understood" I like the parenthetical line from http://rules-of-the-game.com/com002-memoir1.htm http://rules-of-the-game.com/com002-memoir1.htm , which describes some people who are trying to understand the FORTRAN compiler based on analysis of its assembly code. I quote more than that line to give context: > As we read the code, we flow-charted. As the flow charts grew, we Scotch-taped page to page, since we didn't know enough yet to be able to identify distinct modules or procedures that could safely be relegated to separate pages. The code didn't lend itself very readily to such treatment, in any case; this was, remember, a vast, undifferentiated torrent of assembly-language code, whose main organizing principle was not "while" or "until," but rather "Oh, and another thing!" (If you take this as a dig at the FORTRAN designers and implementers, you are badly mistaken; that would be like criticizing Lewis & Clark for not taking Interstate 80 when traveling west.)