I suppose we shall amend to "The determined Real Programmer will fix FORTRAN" ;)
But, for the folks who didn't grow up with the Real Programmer jokes, this is rooted in a context of FORTRAN 77. Which was, uh, not famous for its readability or modularity. (But got stuff done, so there's that)
I wrote a lot of F77 code way back when, including an 8080 simulator similar to that written by Gates and Allen used to build their BASIC for Altair. I don't know what language they wrote theirs in, but mine was pretty readable, just a bit late. And it was very portable - Dec10, VAX, IBM VM/CMS with almost no changes.
I think F77 was a pretty well designed language, given the legacy stuff it had to support.
It was well designed. Hence the "it got stuff done".
But it was also behind the times. And, if we're fair, half of its reputation comes from the fact that half of the F77 code was written by PhDs, who usually have... let's call it a unique style of writing software.
Indeed. Two PhD students came to see me when the polytechnic I worked for switched from a Dec10 to two IBM 4381s.
[them] How can we get our code to work on the IBM?
[me] (examines code) This only looks vaguely like Fortran.
[them] Yes, we used all these wonderful extensions that Digital provides!
[me] (collapse on the floor laughing) (recover) Hmm. Go see Mike (our VAX systems programmer). You may be able to run on our VAXen, but I can't imagine it running on the IBMs without a major rewrite. Had they stuck to F77 there would have been few problems, and I could have helped with them.
Portability is always worth aiming for, even if you don't get all the way there.
