• (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    It was the first programming language taught to physics and chemistry students at the time

    Engineering students, too.

    dkf:
    I have no idea really whether we used the enhancements or not.
    The last time I used it was, I'm pretty sure, in a numerical methods class. The teacher was actually in the Aero department, so all our assignments were along the lines of "given this moment of inertia and this control surface input, integrate to find the plane's roll/pitch/yaw response." F77 vs. IV would have made little or no difference in those assignments.
  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    F77 vs. IV would have made little or no difference in those assignments.

    They sound like the sort of assignment where you work out what operation you need, look up the name of the function that implements it (because all function names have to be just upper-case letters and numbers, and no more than 6 characters long, so actually meaningful names are simply not used), set the arrays up right, and crank the handle.

    It was more fun dealing with the theoretical physics people doing these things. I remember one person who kept running out of time slice (a generous 10 minutes) during compilation of his program to compute something in quantum mechanics. Merely factoring out the calls to define values for π and e and splitting his expression from being one line many thousands of characters long (no idea how long actually; “didn't fit on the screen” is what I remember) into many lines that would fit neatly on an 80-column screen made it run in a couple of seconds. The amazing thing was that he'd written this whole thing by hand, and he'd got it correct first time. It just gave the compiler severe constipation. :smiley:

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    They sound like the sort of assignment where you work out what operation you need, look up the name of the function that implements it ..., and crank the handle.

    The point was rather more learning what it meant to solve problems numerically, what algorithms one might use for doing so, etc. We may have eventually learned that these were wheels that didn't need to be reinvented, but it's all been rather more years ago than I care to think about, so my recollection is a bit fuzzy.

    Filed under: Hinc secedas pratum meum

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    Hinc secedas pratum meum

    Withdraw from my meadow? :laughing:

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    The point was rather more learning what it meant to solve problems numerically, what algorithms one might use for doing so, etc.

    And my point was that functions back then tended to have names like F02XP5†. Good luck memorising what those mean for a large algorithm library!

  • (disco) in reply to obeselymorbid
    obeselymorbid:
    meadow

    I suspect “field” would be better, as in battlefield.

  • (disco) in reply to dkf

    lawn

Leave a comment on “Count On It”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article