Third public review of X3J11 C (a scientist speaks up)

[News system]

In article <9 at argosy.UUCP> ian at argosy.UUCP (Ian L. Kaplan) writes:

>  The Fortran 8x committee has its problems, but lack of features is
>not one of them.  The April '87 Fortran draft standard includes a
>number of "modern programming language" features, including something
>like structures ...

>"I don't know what the most popular numeric programming language will
> look like in the year 2000, but it will be named Fortran."

Deja vu. In 1963 a commitee (Share) got together to produce FORTRAN V. It
had structures, if-then-else, switch statements (spelled 'GOTO
<expression>'), eight types of numeric data, and a whole bunch more.  After
the commitee saw what they had wrought, they decided that it was good.  But
FORTRAN V was a bad name.  So they called the language NPL (New programming
Language).  When the Naval Physics Lab complained, the commitee changed the
name again.  And Voila!  PL/I was born.

   Marv Rubinstein