11–20 of 21 posts
Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia "Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language...
> remove bit twiddling — System programming languages like C, C++, Odin, and Zig need to manipulate bits, but a scientific DSL like Fortran does not need bit twiddling operators like &, |, ~, and so on. Bits are, after all, hardware-level concepts. Yeah no, your language will be DOA if you don't have bit twiddling, because you can't write arbitrary binary file parser / writer without some sort of bit manipulation. Ev…
I loved how the Fortress language was coming slong till Oracle killed it. It was an interesting mix if Fortran and functional programming ideas with thoughtful ideas on parallelization. Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia "Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language...
I feel like the author is just wasting the reader's time. This thing is 88 printed pages (probably 50 if he had used a reasonable font size) of somewhat dubious history of programming languages, a section of options, and then a long section on his fantasy ideal language to replace Fortran. Finally, in the conclusion, he does a rug pull. The conclusion is that he wants is something like this: https://martinfowler.com/…
> Simula (1962) the first object-oriented (OO).
No, Simula (1962) was not object-oriented. Only its successor "Simula 67", which was described publicly in some papers in the first half of 1968, was the first "object-oriented" language, by inventing the "virtual" procedures and functions, and also class inheritance. Simula 67 inherited most of its concepts and terminology, including keywords like "class" and "new", from a crucial paper published by C. A. R. Hoare in November 1965-11, "Record Handling". Except for its new object-oriented features and for the features taken from Hoare, Simula 67 was a language very similar to ALGOL 60.
> ALGOL (1958)
"ALGOL" did not exist in 1958. In December 1958, a description of IAL (International Algebraic Language) was published. IAL is the predecessor of ALGOL 60, which was published in May 1960.
A significant part of ALGOL 60 was already present in IAL (1958), but some important parts of IAL were deleted and some new very important features were added in ALGOL 60. The differences between IAL and ALGOL 60 are comparable with the differences between C and C++, i.e. they are related languages, but they are also very different.
ALGOL 60 introduced the concept of "block" with local variables that are allocated upon block entry and released upon block exit. This required the use of stacks and stack pointers and it allowed the implementation of recursive procedures. ALGOL 60 also introduced several other less important, but still significant features, like the "while" loops.
But ALGOL 60 lost a very important feature of IAL (1958) and this loss has crippled many modern programming languages, which have followed too subserviently ALGOL 60. In IAL, unlike in the followers of ALGOL 60, the result of a function could consist of multiple values, i.e. a function could have both multiple input parameters and multiple output parameters and the syntax of assignment allowed the assignment of the output parameters to multiple variables.
Besides ALGOL 60, IAL (1958) had another descendant, the language JOVIAL (Jules' Own Version of IAL), which was used extensively by the US Military and later it had an important influence on the Department of Defense requirements for the programming language that eventually became Ada (1979).
> Note that the original stylised name “FORTRAN” changed to the modern form “Fortran” with the publication of the Fortran 1990 standard.
In fact, the early names of many programming languages, like FORTRAN, ALGOL and COBOL were not printed in capitals, except where good typography was not available, e.g. when using a typewriting machine.
Where normal typographic features where available, like in a book or in a journal, the names of the programming languages used a capital only for the initial letter, while the following letters were written with small capitals.
Nowadays the number of people familiar with the use of small capitals has decreased a lot and many low quality fonts do not include small capitals (in which case the word processor simulates the small capitals with smaller big capitals, which do not look as good as true small capitals).
Because of this, like with Fortran, many words that in the past used small capitals are written now with lower-case letters.
Small mistakes in TFA: > Simula (1962) the first object-oriented (OO). No, Simula (1962) was not object-oriented. Only its successor "Simula 67", which was described publicly in some papers in the first half of 1968, was the first "object-oriented" language, by inventing the "virtual" procedures and functions, and also class inheritance. Simula 67 inherited most of its concepts and terminology, including keywords lik…
> remove bit twiddling — System programming languages like C, C++, Odin, and Zig need to manipulate bits, but a scientific DSL like Fortran does not need bit twiddling operators like &, |, ~, and so on. Bits are, after all, hardware-level concepts. Yeah no, your language will be DOA if you don't have bit twiddling, because you can't write arbitrary binary file parser / writer without some sort of bit manipulation. Ev…
I think the OP's thoughts are really deep, but I disagree on some points.Personally, I think the suggestion in the OP about switching Fortran to row-major is a separate issue. I have doubts about whether scientific languages should make such a switch. Rather, I consider it Fortran's competitive advantage. You can directly bring mathematical thinking into it. There are also cache related concerns. Because it's an arra…
For linear algebra, the Fortran convention, "column-major" is indeed superior.
This is most obvious when computing a matrix-vector product, i.e. a linear transformation of a vector, which is a very common operation.
In schools this operation is typically taught in the wrong way, i.e. by computing scalar products of row vectors from the matrix with the column vector operand.
This naive method is inefficient. The correct method that must be used in computers is to avoid scalar products, but use the so-called AXPY operation (from its BLAS name. i.e. scalar A times vector X Plus vector Y), where the operands are column vectors from the matrix and the column vector that is the second operand of the matrix-vector product.
Therefore, to compute the product one needs to read columns from the matrix, so for maximum throughput the elements of a column must be stored sequentially.
In schools, also the matrix-matrix product is taught in the wrong way, with scalar products between row vectors and column vectors.
The correct way also avoids the inefficient scalar products and replaces them with tensor products of column vectors.
I loved how the Fortress language was coming slong till Oracle killed it. It was an interesting mix if Fortran and functional programming ideas with thoughtful ideas on parallelization. Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia "Fortress (programming language) - Wikipedia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language...
It’s a tragedy. I feel the work they were doing was important. At least we got this talk from guy steele https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXzHAE
I think the OP's thoughts are really deep, but I disagree on some points.Personally, I think the suggestion in the OP about switching Fortran to row-major is a separate issue. I have doubts about whether scientific languages should make such a switch. Rather, I consider it Fortran's competitive advantage. You can directly bring mathematical thinking into it. There are also cache related concerns. Because it's an arra…
I agree with the explanation you give at that link. For linear algebra, the Fortran convention, "column-major" is indeed superior. This is most obvious when computing a matrix-vector product, i.e. a linear transformation of a vector, which is a very common operation. In schools this operation is typically taught in the wrong way, i.e. by computing scalar products of row vectors from the matrix with the column vector…