Fortran : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

"I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts')" (By Olaf Kirch)
A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard.
A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis.
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. -- Fred Brooks
An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN.
FORTRAN is a good example of a language which is easier to parse using ad hoc techniques. -- D. Gries [What's good about it? Ed.]
FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis
FORTRAN is the language of Powerful Computers. -- Steven Feiner
FORTRAN rots the brain. -- John McQuillin
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
[FORTRAN] will persist for some time -- probably for at least the next decade. -- T. Cheatham
I'm not even going to ______bother comparing C to BASIC or FORTRAN. -- L. Zolman, creator of BDS C
It's multiple choice time... What is FORTRAN? a: Between thre and fiv tran. b: What two computers engage in before they interface. c: Ridiculous.
On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.
Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks.
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change. -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN. -- Alan Perlis
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers. -- Steven Feiner
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix, APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS. - Fred Brooks, Jr.
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and Fortran programs, for example. - Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
FORTRAN? The syntactically incorrect statement "DO 10 I = 1.10" will parse and generate code creating a variable, DO10I, as follows: "DO10I = 1.10" If that doesn't terrify you, it should.
Real World, The, n.: 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person.
To code the impossible code, This is my quest -- To bring up a virgin machine, To debug that code, To pop out of endless recursion, No matter how hopeless, To grok what appears on the screen, No matter the load, To write those routines To right the unrightable bug, Without question or pause, To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV To mount the unmountable magtape, For a heavenly cause. To stop the unstoppable crash! And I know if I'll only be true To this glorious quest, And the queue will be better for this, That my code will run CUSPy and calm, That one man, scorned and When it's put to the test. destined to lose, Still strove with his last allocation To scrap the unscrappable kludge! -- To "The Impossible Dream", from Man of La Mancha
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes Did logzerneg the ifthen block All kludgy were the function flows And subroutines adhoc. Beware the runtime-bug my friend squrooneg, the false goto Beware the infiniteloop And shun the inprectoo. -- "OUTCONERR," to the scheme of "Jabberwocky"
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
<Deek> "A good programmer can write FORTRAN in any language." <Deek> knghtbrd has proven that you can write C++ in any language too. <grin> <Mercury> We are currently considdering if we should give him or prize, or kill him.. <Mercury> (Of course, by all rights, this means we should give him the prize, and then kill him.. <G>)
<wli> Yeah, I looked at esd and it looked like the kind of C code that an ex-JOVIAL/Algol '60 coder who had spent the last 20 years bouncing between Fortran-IV and Fortran '77 would write.
I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts') -- Olaf Kirch