#Write a FORTRAN

[frank-olivier]

The Evolution of Programming Paradigms: Recursion’s Impact on Language Design

“Recursion, n. See Recursion.” -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1906-1911)

The roots of programming languages can be traced back to Alan Turing's groundbreaking work in the 1930s. Turing's vision of a universal computing machine, known as the Turing machine, laid the theoretical foundation for modern computing. His concept of a stack, although not explicitly named, was an integral part of his model for computation.

Turing's machine utilized an infinite tape divided into squares, with a read-write head that could move along the tape. This tape-based system exhibited stack-like behavior, where the squares represented elements of a stack, and the read-write head performed operations like pushing and popping data. Turing's work provided a theoretical framework that would later influence the design of programming languages and computer architectures.

In the 1950s, the development of high-level programming languages began to revolutionize the field of computer science. The introduction of FORTRAN (Formula Translation) in 1957 by John Backus and his team at IBM marked a significant milestone. FORTRAN was designed to simplify the programming process, allowing scientists and engineers to express mathematical formulas and algorithms more naturally.

Around the same time, Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist, led the development of COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language). COBOL aimed to address the needs of business applications, focusing on readability and English-like syntax. These early high-level languages introduced the concept of structured programming, where code was organized into blocks and subroutines, laying the groundwork for stack-based function calls.

As high-level languages gained popularity, the underlying computer architectures also evolved. James Hamblin's work on stack machines in the 1950s played a crucial role in the practical implementation of stacks in computer systems. Hamblin's stack machine, also known as a zero-address machine, utilized a central stack memory for storing intermediate results during computation.

Assembly language, a low-level programming language, was closely tied to the architecture of the underlying computer. It provided direct control over the machine's hardware, including the stack. Assembly language programs used stack-based instructions to manipulate data and manage subroutine calls, making it an essential tool for early computer programmers.

The development of ALGOL (Algorithmic Language) in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a significant step forward in programming language design. ALGOL was a collaborative effort by an international team, including Friedrich L. Bauer and Klaus Samelson, to create a language suitable for expressing algorithms and mathematical concepts.

Bauer and Samelson's work on ALGOL introduced the concept of recursive subroutines and the activation record stack. Recursive subroutines allowed functions to call themselves with different parameters, enabling the creation of elegant and powerful algorithms. The activation record stack, also known as the call stack, managed the execution of these recursive functions by storing information about each function call, such as local variables and return addresses.

ALGOL's structured approach to programming, combined with the activation record stack, set a new standard for language design. It influenced the development of subsequent languages like Pascal, C, and Java, which adopted stack-based function calls and structured programming paradigms.

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed the emergence of structured and object-oriented programming languages, further solidifying the role of stacks in computer science. Pascal, developed by Niklaus Wirth, built upon ALGOL's structured programming concepts and introduced more robust stack-based function calls.

The 1980s saw the rise of object-oriented programming with languages like C++ and Smalltalk. These languages introduced the concept of objects and classes, encapsulating data and behavior. The stack played a crucial role in managing object instances and method calls, ensuring proper memory allocation and deallocation.

Today, stacks continue to be an integral part of modern programming languages and paradigms. Languages like Java, Python, and C# utilize stacks implicitly for function calls and local variable management. The stack-based approach allows for efficient memory management and modular code organization.

Functional programming languages, such as Lisp and Haskell, also leverage stacks for managing function calls and recursion. These languages emphasize immutability and higher-order functions, making stacks an essential tool for implementing functional programming concepts.

Moreover, stacks are fundamental in the implementation of virtual machines and interpreters. Technologies like the Java Virtual Machine and the Python interpreter use stacks to manage the execution of bytecode or intermediate code, providing platform independence and efficient code execution.

The evolution of programming languages is deeply intertwined with the development and refinement of the stack. From Turing's theoretical foundations to the practical implementations of stack machines and the activation record stack, the stack has been a driving force in shaping the way we program computers.

How the stack got stacked (Kay Lack, September 2024)

Thursday, October 10, 2024

[fragariavescana]

There should be a down to the countryside movement for computational scientists where they have to live in a cave and write maintainable backend webshit code for a decade.

[cups-official]

my main motivating factor for learning new programming languages is how funny I think it would be

[idioticbat]

i'm curious about something with your conlang and setting during the computing era in Ebhorata, is Swädir's writing system used in computers (and did it have to be simplified any for early computers)? is there a standard code table like how we have ascii (and, later, unicode)? did this affect early computers word sizes? or the size of the standard information quanta used in most data systems? ("byte" irl, though some systems quantize it more coarsely (512B block sizes were common))

also, what's Zesiyr like? is it akin to fortran or c or cobol, or similar to smalltalk, or more like prolog, forth, or perhaps lisp? (or is it a modern language in setting so should be compared to things like rust or python or javascript et al?) also also have you considered making it an esolang? (in the "unique" sense, not necessarily the "difficult to program in" sense)

nemmyltok :3

also small pun that only works if it's tɔk or tɑk, not toʊk: "now we're nemmyltalking"

so...i haven't worked much on my worldbuilding lately, and since i changed a lot of stuff with the languages and world itself, the writing systems i have are kinda outdated. I worked a lot more on the ancestor of swædir, ntsuqatir, and i haven't worked much on its daughter languages, which need some serious redesign.

Anyway. Computers are about 100 years old, give or take, on the timeline where my cat and fox live. Here, computers were born out of the need for long-distance communication and desire for international cooperation in a sparsely populated world, where the largest cities don't have much more than 10,000 inhabitants, are set quite far apart from each other with some small villages and nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples inbetween them. Computers were born out of telegraph and radio technology, with the goal of transmitting and receiving text in a faster, error-free way, which could be automatically stored and read later, so receiving stations didn't need 24/7 operators. So, unlike our math/war/business machines, multi-language text support was built in from the start, while math was a later addition.

At the time of the earliest computers, there was a swædir alphabet which descended from the earlier ntsuqatir featural alphabet:

the phonology here is pretty outdated, but the letters are the same, and it'd be easy to encode this. Meanwhile, the up-to-date version of the ntsuqatir featural alphabet looks like this:

it works like korean, and composing characters that combine the multiple components is so straightforward i made a program in shell script to typeset text in this system so i could write longer text without drawing or copying and pasting every character. At the time computers were invented, this was used mostly for ceremonial purposes, though, so i'm not sure if they saw any use in adding it to computers early on.

The most common writing system was from the draconian language, which is a cursive abjad with initial, medial, final and isolated letter shapes, like arabic:

Since dragons are a way older species and they really like record-keeping, some sort of phonetic writing system should exist based on their language, which already has a lot of phonemes, to record unwritten languages and describe languages of other peoples.

There are also languages on the north that use closely related alphabets:

...and then other languages which use/used logographic and pictographic writing systems.

So, since computers are not a colonial invention, and instead were created in a cooperative way by various nations, they must take all of the diversity of the world's languages into account. I haven't thought about it that much, but something like unicode should have been there from the start. Maybe the text starts with some kind of heading which informs the computer which language is encoded, and from there the appropriate writing system is chosen for that block of text. This would also make it easy to encode multi-lingual text. I also haven't thought about anything like word size, but since these systems are based on serial communication like telegraph, i guess word sizes should be flexible, and the CPU-RAM bus width doesn't matter much...? I'm not even sure if information is represented in binary numbers or something else, like the balanced ternary of the Setun computer

As you can see, i have been way more interested in the anthropology and linguistics bits of it than the technological aspects. At least i can tell that printing is probably done with pen plotters and matrix printers to be able to handle the multiple writing systems with various types of characters and writing directions. I'm not sure how input is done, but i guess some kind of keyboard works mostly fine. More complex writing systems could use something like stroke composition or phonetic transliteration, and then the text would be displayed in a screen before being recorded/sent.

Also the idea of ndzəntsi(a)r/zesiyr is based on C. At the time, the phonology i was using for ntsuqatir didn't have a /s/ phoneme, and so i picked one of the closest phonemes, /ⁿdz/, which evolves to /z/ in swædir, which gave the [ⁿdzə] or [ze] programming language its name. Coming up with a word for fox, based on the character's similarity was an afterthought. It was mostly created as a prop i could use in art to make the world feel like having an identity of its own, than a serious attempt at having a programming language. Making an esolang out of it would be going way out of the way since i found im not that interested in the technical aspects for their own sake, and having computers was a purely aesthetics thing that i repurposed into a more serious cultural artifact like mail, something that would make sense in storytelling and worldbuilding.

Now that it exists as a concept, though, i imagine it being used in academic and industrial setting, mostly confined to the nation where it was created. Also i don't think they have the needs or computing power for things like the more recent programming languages - in-world computers haven't changed much since their inception, and aren't likely to. No species or culture there has a very competitive or expansionist mindset, there isn't a scarcity of resources since the world is large and sparsely populated, and there isn't some driving force like capitalism creating an artificial demand such as moore's law. They are very creative, however, and computers and telecommunications were the ways they found to overcome the large distances between main cities, so they can better help each other in times of need.

[anocana]

books i read 2024. idk if this is a complete list but it's the memorable ones. not in any particular order

Samuel Delany — Trouble on Triton (1976)

in the running for my favorite Delany and certainly his best conventional SFF I've read. this was apparently his response to the Dispossessed and it's got its parallels — planets encrusted with the histories and hierarchies of long centuries contrasted with utopic(?) projects on moons, and protagonists not entirely at home in either place — but the details are in many ways inverted. lots of genuinely funny jokes: my favorite is the one about the Thomists. second best is that it would be a grand sweeping tragedy of flawed attempts at utopia and political maneuverings across the solar system, except the protagonist is a self-absorbed asshole who doesn't give a shit. Delany's got a real talent for social and psychological realism, and in particular for displaying the neuroses and unpleasantnesses we wish we didn't recognize in ourselves.

Samuel Delany — Nevèrÿon series (1979-1985)

this is actually a whole series of fantasy stories ranging from short to novel-length, three volumes of which I read last year (I still haven't finished the ones collected as Return to Nevèrÿon (1987)). it's basically an exploration of semiotics and power and myth through a world that's just invented writing and is in the process of inventing a lot of other things. most of the stories were good but not as good as Triton or Dhalgren; the fantasy setting serves as a way to explore oversimplified and archetypal versions of things, which I'm not always on board with artistically or philosophically. but I did enjoy how characters would cross paths and reappear in each other's stories, and some of the stories were among his best. even the ones that felt too much like authorial rants had great moments. v fun frame narrative also.

the clear standout is The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals, the other competitor for my favorite Delany. it was written during the early days of the AIDS crisis before the cause of AIDS was known (the virus now known as HIV had been identified but not confirmed responsible). the tale goes back and forth between a story of a plague in Nevèrÿon and realistic accounts of New York gay life across classes at the time, eventually blurring the lines and calling into question its own realism. it's stylistically striking, captures well the atmosphere of a terrifying period, and (I think) wouldn't hit nearly as hard if you skip the prior Nevèrÿon stories which give the context of the fantasy segments.

James Grehan — Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (2016)

this one's a very dense academic book. the accounts of the complete lack of centralized religious authority, and the common features of everyday religion regardless of nominal faith or sect, were very interesting (Christians praying at shrines to the Companions, etc). I didn't take much away from the many tables of data like precise numbers of mosques and churches in and around each notable town of the 19th century Ottoman Levant, though I did have a fun time looking through them.

Iannis Xenakis — Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition (1971)

genuinely fascinating book. Xenakis details various mathematical approaches to composition: several variants on stochastics, game theory, set theory, some others — none of them are specifically relevant to my current practice but it was illuminating to see how he thinks about them. it was written as essays from 1955 to 1971 and has 8 pages of FORTRAN code to produce stochastic music including a whole data segment of seemingly random numbers. his predictions on the future of electronic music have not all been borne out, but he identifies some of the exact same tendencies you can see in discussions of computer-generated art today.

Xenakis additionally discusses philosophy of music; he's very concerned with what he calls "outside-time structure" and sees a total poverty of it in modern Western music, compared to the complex harmonic systems of many other traditions including Byzantine music. he attributes this to the "blindness" caused by polyphony. he's got very strong opinions and doesn't sugarcoat them: serial music's "ignorant dogmatism" is a complete doubling-down on Western music's "blindness" which results in "auditory and ideological nonsense", he has some choice words for aleatoric composers ("logical infirmities", "the problem of choice is betrayed"), and polyphony itself is "a highly original invention of the barbarous and uncultivated Occident following the schism of the churches".

Imre Lakatos — Proofs and Refutations (1976)

one of the best works of phil of math i've read. much needed counter to the dominant (in math education and popular perception if not serious phil of math) deductive perspective of reasoning from True axioms to Certain proofs. it's about 130 pages of very readable prose dialogue, not overly dense or formal, between "students" representing different perspectives on mathematical practice; the book eventually endorses "the method of proofs and refutations" in which definitions and proofs are generated by different ends of the same process, hypotheses and arguments revised as they run into counterexamples and failures. dialectically, one might say.

Paul Feyerabend — Against Method (1975)

Feyerabend has a compelling case that standard philosophies of science are incorrect because scientists don't follow philosophically approved approaches, a plausible assertion that there aren't enough similarities between scientific discipline to even support a unified philosophy of science, and a rather odd philosophy of society that I could inaccurately call "liberal left-Leninism". I'm sympathetic to the argument that science's institutional authority has done lots of fucked up shit, but if you're trying to argue that we need a diversity of traditions, maybe don't argue that "independently of participation in a tradition, there is not much to choose between humanitarianism and anti-Semitism". one suspects he was trying to absolve himself for his participation in the Wehrmacht.

Penelope Maddy — Realism in Mathematics (1990)

I tore through this one over the past couple days, so it's not technically 2024, but it's still early January so whatever. I enjoyed it, but I was hoping for modern arguments in favor of mathematical platonism. while Maddy was a realist at this point, she was more physicalist than platonist, and mainly concerned with the reality of sets — she's perfectly happy to dismiss the reality of numbers-as-objects. personally insofar as I accept the existence of composite objects I think sets are mostly fine to accept as real and physical (except for concerns around time-dependence and identity re: extensionality), but I don't think composites do anything ontologically that the arrangement and relationships of their parts can't. since 1990 apparently she's rejected any substantial realism, so I need to read her more recent works which sound like they share many of my intuitions. but I'm still in the market for a good modern platonist.

W. E. B. Du Bois — Black Reconstruction (1935)

my book club read most of this in 2023 but we finished it in February so I'm counting it. really incredible book, it's hard to overstate its influence. Du Bois's account of emancipation and Reconstruction as a revolutionary moment betrayed (paralleling somewhat the moments of 1848 in Europe) is deeply compelling, if perhaps overly rosy about the American project. he was barred access to most Southern archives so it's extraordinary how much historical detail he was able to put together from what seemed like mostly newspaper articles. the chapters that focused on regional detail got somewhat bogged down as far as we were concerned but presumably are relevant to more academic historians; the chapters that take a broader view are very clear and incisive, laying out the material and psychological stakes for the various factions and their shifting alignments (culminating in the unified white counterrevolution that eventually crushed Reconstruction). he's really good at moving between academic and poetic modes as appropriate.

in progress (alone or collectively), so i'm not gonna comment yet:

Samuel Delany — Return to Nevèrÿon

Alain Badiou — Being and Event

CLR James — Black Jacobins

idk who all — Homotopy Type Theory (I'm not far in).

some textbook on categorical logic of which I got through a couple chapters. I would like to go back but am not convinced I will. at least I did do the exercises for those chapters; I need to get better at doing that w math books.

[river-gale]

2, 5 12, 27 with (of course) River Gale?

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i think it has to be that scene where they talk about register in english and how all our most formal syntax is latin and greek in origin and our least formal is usually germanic. just, the fact that they know that and are willing to randomly spend several minutes explaining it. i fell instantly in love

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

someone put 'Simulation Swarm' by Big Thief in a mars house playlist and i haven't stopped thinking about it since. river and aubrey....

like wrong gender obviously but i think of them when i hear it. so.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

i put this in a fic once already but i just feel in my heart that they know fortran. the programming language from 1957 bizarrely still in use among engineers. like, if you asked them to solve any problem in fortran, they could do it, and the solution would be bizarre, totally unreadable to anyone else, and LIGHTNING fast. i have programming style headcanons for every pulley character but this one is my fave

27. FREEBIE QUESTION!!

CARTE BLANCHE TO TALK ABOUT RIVER GALE!? LET'S GOOOO

i'm putting this under a readmore because i can't stop yapping.

i have so much to say. i could write individual essays about their politics, their gender, and their relationship to their sibling, but i want to talk about the argument they have with january sort of mid-book

i love this argument because they both have a point! january has a point bc gale's policies suck and because gale is obviously super privileged in their education. when i first read it, i thought gale was being kind of obtuse for not acknowledging that, but...

on like my third reread i realized i've been in this argument on gale's side lmao. i'd like to think i'd respond more maturely now that i've been there a couple times, but in the moment, "i can't argue with you about this because you're too smart for me" is really deeply unpleasant to hear! it doesn't feel like the other person is pointing out privilege, it feels like they're saying "i can't connect or engage with you on this because i (a) don't trust you enough to believe you'll listen to me or pay enough attention to see my argument when i don't express it perfectly, in fact i think you don't care at all about what i have to say, and (b) you are different from me in a way that is inherent and immutable, so much so that i can't even discuss things with you." and it's easy to see why that hurts!

and gale probably feels that last one way more because their halo reading means their brain is actually, physically different from everyone else's! january is 100% valid for feeling overwhelmed in this moment and for these reasons, but to gale, who connects with people by debating them bc they care about other people's opinions, it probably feels like a moderately insulting rejection.

i also think gale is the sort of person who views a debate or an argument as an opportunity for synthesis—disagreeing with someone and pointing out the counterarguments isn't to tear their argument down, it's to make it stronger by giving it an opportunity to address its flaws!! it's to arrive at the truth together!! it's a way to grow closer to people by learning how they think!! but we can see here that january views it as a violent takedown, which is completely valid of him given what gale and their pr team did to him at the beginning of the book!! that WAS a violent takedown, it lost him his job, and it was his first introduction to gale, so it's totally reasonable of him to assume that's how they work all the time, even though it's extremely not!!

i just love gale so much, because they obviously care so much about other people when the other people are right there in front of them. and they try really hard to tone the argumentative curiosity down, because they know it makes people uncomfortable, but it's their truest way of expressing that care. and it's so easy to misinterpret. and if you really think about it this conversation is kind of tragic for them, especially if you read them as having feelings for january at this point!

tl;dr: i think it's a fantastic character dynamic packed into the span of a short conversation! thank you for reading my impromptu river gale essay <3

[fights4users]

Assorted system headcanons-

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a headcanon dump and I now think I’m marginally better at in system/grid writing so here we go

“It/it’s” is commonly used interchangeably with gendered pronouns for programs. It’s a way to reflect that they’re not human and gender if anything is more a display/user reflection thing.

Programming languages = literal languages (this is somewhat canon, there’s background characters talking about needed to translate “Don’t speak Fortran”- there was a post a while back)

There’s more gore on the Grid because it’s not running properly, it’s a form of lag! So there’s gore, missing limbs etc instead of a quicker de-resolution and re dispersement of energy. Think of it like how the wall on the game grid stayed unfixed in the original movie- the energy is focused elsewhere.

Not original stated by me but similarly to the gore Grid programs have simpler circuitry as they lack purpose, it got worse as time went on. Started as sleek aesthetic but as the system sat dormant it became less and less. I don’t know I just think this is sad and great to play around with.

Programs will occasionally make/produce noises. Similar to the bleeps and random electronic sound in the world around them, there’s a whole non-language based communication. (Animalistic isn’t the right term, inhuman? Like someone just makes a really angry dial up tone at you)

Pings. Also not mine originally but I fully believe this headcanon.

Counterpart’s are connected via code, also not originally mine. However the idea of being literally apart of someone you love? Able to just look at each other and know what to do/say is so so good. (At least in the Encom system)

There’s multiple forms of transport beams, some of them will have a ship attach and ride it while others a program can step into and is sort of like a tube system.

They totally have a people mover style transport as well, I just think this is funny but also a homage to the overlay the 82’ film did.

[featheredfusiondragon]

There’s a funny dichotomy between the quotas for storage space on the clusters I use for work.

On one hand I have over 4 TB of simulation data sitting on the clusters work drives, with every intention of increasing that and still far from the limit I’m allowed without asking for more.

On the other, I have my home folders. Which for some reason always have their limits set like it’s still 2005. But program configs and code packages are stored in the home folder. When it gets full most programs start breaking as they can’t write a temporary files.

I’m standing there with rm in my outstretched hand. Pointing it between Firefox saying, hands up and shaking, “you can’t delete .mozilla, your history and favorites are in there.” And anaconda, with its arms crossed, staring me in the face, “well if you can’t handle 800 MB of random package files and 500 MB for the environment maybe you should go back to Fortran?”

I look down to du in my other hand.

“They’ve got to go for the good of the directory. Delete them,” it whispers.

[frank-olivier]

The story of BASIC’s development began in 1963, when Kemeny and Kurtz, both mathematics professors at Dartmouth, recognized the need for a programming language that could be used by non-technical students. At the time, most programming languages were complex and required a strong background in mathematics and computer science. Kemeny and Kurtz wanted to create a language that would allow students from all disciplines to use computers, regardless of their technical expertise.

The development of BASIC was a collaborative effort between Kemeny, Kurtz, and a team of students, including Mary Kenneth Keller, John McGeachie, and others. The team worked tirelessly to design a language that was easy to learn and use, with a syntax that was simple and intuitive. They drew inspiration from existing programming languages, such as ALGOL and FORTRAN, but also introduced many innovative features that would become hallmarks of the BASIC language.

One of the key innovations of BASIC was its use of simple, English-like commands. Unlike other programming languages, which required users to learn complex syntax and notation, BASIC used commands such as “PRINT” and “INPUT” that were easy to understand and remember. This made it possible for non-technical users to write programs and interact with the computer, without needing to have a deep understanding of computer science.

BASIC was first implemented on the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, a pioneering computer system that allowed multiple users to interact with the computer simultaneously. The Time-Sharing System was a major innovation in itself, as it allowed users to share the computer’s resources and work on their own projects independently. With BASIC, users could write programs, run simulations, and analyze data, all from the comfort of their own terminals.

The impact of BASIC was immediate and profound. The language quickly gained popularity, not just at Dartmouth, but also at other universities and institutions around the world. It became the language of choice for many introductory programming courses, and its simplicity and ease of use made it an ideal language for beginners. As the personal computer revolution took hold in the 1970s and 1980s, BASIC became the language of choice for many hobbyists and enthusiasts, who used it to write games, utilities, and other applications.

Today, BASIC remains a popular language, with many variants and implementations available. While it may not be as widely used as it once was, its influence can still be seen in many modern programming languages, including Visual Basic, Python, and JavaScript. The development of BASIC was a major milestone in the history of computer science, as it democratized computing and made it accessible to a wider range of people.

The Birth of BASIC (Dartmouth College, August 2014)

Friday, April 25, 2025

[max1461]

Scientific simulation/government contractors. My company uses C++, and that's because we "modernized" from Fortran a few years ago (but actually some of our core code is still in Fortran). I do anything I can to write my projects in something else though (py/C#/js)

That last parenthetical is causing me great harm but thank you for the information.

[cups-official]

I kinda want to mess around with rust more but realistically the next language I learn is gonna be something like fortran or llvm ir

[afactaday]

#aFactADay2023

#1048: when arrays of inferred length were being added to FORTRAN 77 (back when you had to write it in all caps), there was a big argument over what to separate the upper and lower bounds with. two of the best proposals were an asterisk and a colon, so Walt Brainerd wrote an article called "Astronomy vs Gastroenterology". i promise, this is the peak of computer science humour, funnier than half a byte being a nibble.

another FORTRAN joke is that "In FORTRAN, GOD is REAL (unless declared INTEGER)", which references the fact that variables have default data types based on their first letter (A-H are real (decimal numbers)).

[astercontrol]

I'm still writing my Tron 1982 fanfic assuming the common language is BASIC

(half-joking. because it might not be BASIC, there is that little scene where some background extras are discussing how they're gonna talk to a character who "doesn't speak FORTRAN")

It's always so disappointing when sci fi and fantasy books call their languages "Basic" or "Common". No language is apolitical or universal if they're all calling one language Basic, who made it that way? Why is THIS dialect "Common" and all the others are Special/Magical/Incomprehensible??? Show me even a hint of the politics, or give your language a real name

[fromdevcom]

I decided to write this article when I realized what a great step forward the modern computer science learning has done in the last 20 years. Think of it. My first “Hello, world” program was written in Sinclair BASIC in 1997 for КР1858ВМ1r This dinosaur was the Soviet clone of the Zilog Z80 microprocessor and appeared on the Eastern Europe market in 1992-1994. I didn’t have any sources of information on how to program besides the old Soviet “Encyclopedia of Dr. Fortran”. And it was actually a graphic novel rather than a BASIC tutorial book. This piece explained to children how to sit next to a monitor and keep eyesight healthy as well as covered the general aspects of programming. Frankly, it involved a great guesswork but I did manage to code. The first real tutorial book I took in my hands in the year of 2000 was “The C++ Programming Language” by Bjarne Stroustrup, the third edition. The book resembled a tombstone and probably was the most fundamental text for programmers I’d ever seen. Even now I believe it never gets old. Nowadays, working with such technologies as Symfony or Django in the DDI Development software company I don’t usually apply to books because they become outdated before seeing a printing press. Everyone can learn much faster and put a lesser effort into finding new things. The number of tutorials currently available brings the opposite struggle to what I encountered: you have to pick a suitable course out of the white noise. In order to save your time, I offer the 20 best tutorials services for developers. Some of them I personally use and some have gained much recognition among fellow technicians. Lynda.com The best thing about Lynda is that it covers all the aspects of web development. The service currently has 1621 courses with more than 65 thousand videos coming with project materials by experts. Once you’ve bought a monthly subscription for a small $30 fee you get an unlimited access to all tutorials. The resource will help you grow regardless your expertise since it contains and classifies courses for all skill levels. Pluralsight.com Another huge resource with 1372 courses currently available from developers for developers. It may be a hardcore decision to start with Pluralsight if you’re a beginner, but it’s a great platform to enhance skills if you already have some programming background. A month subscription costs the same $30 unless you want to receive downloadable exercise files and additional assessments. Then you’ll have to pay $50 per month. Codecademy.com This one is great to start with for beginners. Made in an interactive console format it leads you through basic steps to the understanding of major concepts and techniques. Choose the technology or language you like and start learning. Besides that, Codecademy lets you build websites, games, and apps within its environment, join the community and share your success. Yes, and it’s totally free! Probably the drawback here is that you’ll face challenges if you try to apply gained skills in the real world conditions. Codeschool.com Once you’ve done with Codecademy, look for something more complicated, for example, this. Codeschool offers middle and advanced courses for you to become an expert. You can immerse into learning going through 10 introductory sessions for free and then get a monthly subscription for $30 to watch all screencasts, courses, and solve tasks. Codeavengers.com You definitely should check this one to cover HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Code Avengers is considered to be the most engaging learning you could experience. Interactive tasks, bright characters and visualization of your actions, simple instructions and instilling debugging discipline makes Avengers stand out from the crowd. And unlike other services it doesn’t tie you to schedules allowing to buy either one course or all 10 for $165 at once and study at your own pace. Teamtreehouse.com An all-embracing platform both for beginners and advanced learners. Treehouse

has general development courses as well as real-life tasks such as creating an iOS game or making a photo app. Tasks are preceded by explicit video instructions that you follow when completing exercises in the provided workspace. The basic subscription plan costs $25 per month, and gives access to videos, code engine, and community. But if you want bonus content and videos from leaders in the industry, your pro plan will be $50 monthly. Coursera.org You may know this one. The world famous online institution for all scientific fields, including computer science. Courses here are presented by instructors from Stanford, Michigan, Princeton, and other universities around the world. Each course consists of lectures, quizzes, assignments, and final exams. So intensive and solid education guaranteed. By the end of a course, you receive a verified certificate which may be an extra reason for employers. Coursera has both free and pre-pay courses available. Learncodethehardway.org Even though I’m pretty skeptical about books, these ones are worth trying if you seek basics. The project started as a book for Python learning and later on expanded to cover Ruby, SQL, C, and Regex. For $30 you get a book and video materials for each course. The great thing about LCodeTHW is its focus on practice. Theory is good, but practical skills are even better. Thecodeplayer.com The name stands for itself. Codeplayer contains numerous showcases of creating web features, ranging from programming input forms to designing the Matrix code animation. Each walkthrough has a workspace with a code being written, an output window, and player controls. The service will be great practice for skilled developers to get some tips as well as for newbies who are just learning HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. Programmr.com A great platform with a somewhat unique approach to learning. You don’t only follow courses completing projects, but you do this by means of the provided API right in the browser and you can embed outcome apps in your blog to share with friends. Another attractive thing is that you can participate in Programmr contests and even win some money by creating robust products. Well, it’s time to learn and play. Udemy.com An e-commerse website which sells knowledge. Everyone can create a course and even earn money on it. That might raise some doubts about the quality, but since there is a lot of competition and feedback for each course a common learner will inevitably find a useful training. There are tens of thousands of courses currently available, and once you’ve bought a course you get an indefinite access to all its materials. Udemy prices vary from $30 to $100 for each course, and some training is free. Upcase.com Have you completed the beginner courses yet? It’s time to promote your software engineer’s career by learning something more specific and complex: test-driven development in Ruby on Rails, code refactoring, testing, etc. For $30 per month you get access to the community, video tutorials, coding exercises, and materials on the Git repository. Edx.org A Harvard and MIT program for free online education. Currently, it has 111 computer science and related courses scheduled. You can enroll for free and follow the training led by Microsoft developers, MIT professors, and other experts in the field. Course materials, virtual labs, and certificates are included. Although you don’t have to pay for learning, it will cost $50 for you to receive a verified certificate to add to your CV. Securitytube.net Let’s get more specific here. Surprisingly enough SecurityTube contains numerous pieces of training regarding IT security. Do you need penetration test for your resource? It’s the best place for you to capture some clues or even learn hacking tricks. Unfortunately, many of presented cases are outdated in terms of modern security techniques. Before you start, bother yourself with checking how up-to-date a training is. A lot of videos are free, but you can buy a premium course access for $40.

Rubykoans.com Learn Ruby as you would attain Zen. Ruby Koans is a path through tasks. Each task is a Ruby feature with missing element. You have to fill in the missing part in order to move to the next Koan. The philosophy behind implies that you don’t have a tutor showing what to do, but it’s you who attains the language, its features, and syntax by thinking about it. Bloc.io For those who seek a personal approach. Bloc covers iOS, Android, UI/UX, Ruby on Rails, frontend or full stack development courses. It makes the difference because you basically choose and hire the expert who is going to be your exclusive mentor. 1-on-1 education will be adapted to your comfortable schedule, during that time you’ll build several applications within the test-driven methodology, learn developers’ tools and techniques. Your tutor will also help you showcase the outcome works for employers and train you to pass a job interview. The whole course will cost $5000 or you can pay $1333 as an enrollment fee and $833 per month unless you decide to take a full stack development course. This one costs $9500. Udacity.com A set of courses for dedicated learners. Udacity has introductory as well as specific courses to complete. What is great about it and in the same time controversial is that you watch tutorials, complete assignments, get professional reviews, and enhance skills aligning it to your own schedule. A monthly fee is $200, but Udacity will refund half of the payments if you manage to complete a course within 12 months. Courses are prepared by the leading companies in the industry: Google, Facebook, MongoDB, At&T, and others. Htmldog.com Something HTML, CSS, JavaScript novices and adepts must know about. Simple and free this resource contains text tutorials as well as techniques, examples, and references. HTML Dog will be a great handbook for those who are currently engaged in completing other courses or just work with these frontend technologies. Khanacademy.org It’s diverse and free. Khan Academy provides a powerful environment for learning and coding simultaneously, even though it’s not specified for development learning only. Built-in coding engine lets you create projects within the platform, you watch video tutorials and elaborate challenging tasks. There is also the special set of materials for teachers. Scratch.mit.edu Learning for the little ones. Scratch is another great foundation by MIT created for children from 8 to 15. It won’t probably make your children expert developers, but it will certainly introduce the breathtaking world of computer science to them. This free to use platform has a powerful yet simple engine for making animated movies and games. If you want your child to become an engineer, Scratch will help to grasp the basic idea. Isn’t it inspirational to see your efforts turning into reality? Conclusion According to my experience, you shouldn’t take more than three courses at a time if you combine online training with some major activity because it’s going to be hard to concentrate. Anyway, I tried to pick different types of resources for you to have a choice and decide your own schedule as well as a subscription model. What services do you usually apply to? Do you think online learning can compete with traditional university education yet? Please, share. Dmitry Khaleev is a senior developer at the DDI Development software company with more than 15 years experience in programming and reverse-engineering of code. Currently, he works with PHP and Symfony-based frameworks.

[codingprolab]

CECS 342 Assignment 5 - Ancient Languages with Fortran 77

The purpose of this assignment is to give you some experience programming with older programming languages. You will be using Fortran 77 for this assignment (and not a newer version of Fortran!). Write a program in Fortran 77 to sort an array of numbers entered from the keyboard and then using binary search, search for a number in the array. If the number is not found then it should ask for…

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Now imagine you're in my shoes. i date back to the era where you had to write a program (sorry, they say "write code" these days) just to get a computer to do anything. I come from the era where people had to learn languages such as BASIC and FORTRAN.

Put another way, you know you're old if you know exactly what this bit of "code" will do.

10 FOR X = 100 TO 1 STEP -1

20 PRINT X

30 NEXT

this can't be true can it