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Fortran's Enduring Influence
- Fortran is a foundational 'mother tongue' of programming that still influences modern languages and supercomputing.
- Its long lifespan means engineers often encounter decades-old Fortran code in scientific projects.
Host's Fortran Initiation
- The host recounts joining a research lab and discovering most code was in Fortran, which felt like an alien dialect at first.
- He learned Fortran was hard to use but extremely effective for calculations and supercomputing.
Programmers Wore Many Hats
- Early programmers were often the machine designers because computers were one-off and required deep hardware knowledge.
- The profession of programming separated from hardware design only by the mid-1950s as machines became more common.