
How Thou Canst Maketh a Fine Program in Fortran - AdamFernandez
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-thou-canst-maketh-a-fine-program-in-fortran
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sbierwagen
Needed more
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s)

Turns

In troth, the Fortran programming language is well suited for those persons
who are scientific and who engineer. Named so for the phrase “Formula
Translation,” it is a language exquisite for programming machines.

into

In troth, the Fortran programming language is well suited for thoſe perſons
who are scientific and who engineer. Named so for the phraſe “Formula
Tranſlation,” it is a language exquiſite for programming machines.

Way better.

~~~
rootbear
Bonus points if he had used þe for the in a few places...

~~~
hardlianotion
she

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jejones3141
Author, I pray ye learn Early Modern English verb conjugation, the declension
of "thou", and how the occurrence of periphrastic "do" changed with the era,
that your titles, headings, and text might fall easily upon the eye and mind
of the reader.

(Seriously, nice post, and well done on the title graphic font choice.)

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sevensor
Author missed a trick by not using a font with a long S. Also had some trouble
declining thee/thou/thy, which is admittedly hard for a modern speaker.

~~~
ironcutter
What were the issues with the declensions?

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fusiongyro
Not the parent, but "your machine" should probably be "thy machine." "Thou
compiler" should be "thy compiler." In general, mapping from 3rd to 2nd
person, "he" = "thou", "him" = "thee", and "his" = "thy."

I believe "thou doth do" should just be "thou doth" but I could be mistaken
about what "doth" is. :)

~~~
danblick
Just to share something I think is fun:

Modern German has separate formal and informal pronouns ("du bist" vs. "Sie
sind") and verbs. English used to have them too ("thou art"/"you are"). Even
though people assume "thou" is more formal, it's actually the
informal/intimate version.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou)

Apparently we (~Angles/Saxons) also used to have a separate tense for "a group
of exactly two of you" and words like "both" (vs all) and "either" (vs any)
are residual traces of this.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_\(grammatical_number\))

~~~
hardlianotion
I have always enjoyed the insult "I thou thee thou traitor" offered to Sir
Walter Raleigh, presumably just before he was executed. There is a semi-
plausible explanation of how thou died out in England

[https://www.quora.com/English-language-Why-did-people-
stop-u...](https://www.quora.com/English-language-Why-did-people-stop-using-
thee-thou-hath-shalt-thy-etc-in-writing)

but it leaves open the question why it persists in other languages.

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Insanity
I'm thoroughly surprised to see that Fortran is still being updated (with an
upgrade still in the works for next year apperantly). I had no idea.

I'll give it a shot as it seems interesting to at least have worked in it a
bit, but I do wonder, where is Fortran used these days?

A quick glance at Tiobe[1] shows that it scored a bit higher than Haskell,
Scala and Kotlin. Can anyone explain me why?

[1]: [https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)

~~~
azag0
Personal experience: My general language-to-go is Python, and I'm very fond of
Rust. But Fortran has no competition in numerical computing at native speeds
in terms of convenience. I was just recently rewriting a small Fortran library
(that I usually but not always call from Python) to C, and it was a pain. So,
as a result of that, Fortran is still used heavily in scientific computing.
(On the other hand, Fortran is a pain for anything else than numbers and
arrays.)

It is also the only language I'm aware of that has a special syntax for
distributed memory [1], making parallel distributed computing potentially
extremely convenient.

[1] [https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Coarray](https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Coarray)

~~~
nickpsecurity
What do you think about Julia language? It's a modern take on a language for
number crunching that has support for C and Python code. Also uses some
Fortran libraries that are optimized.

[https://julialang.org](https://julialang.org)

Far as distributed, see Cray's Chapel and Taft's Parasail for languages trying
to improve on that. Chapel's competition was IBM X10 and Fortress languages.
Im not sure if those two are maintained any more, though.

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jjtheblunt
maketh is 3rd person singular, but should be an infinitive. cutesy middle
english "fail"

~~~
gagege
Translates to the Gollum-esque "You can makes a fine program in Fortran"

lol

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jimktrains2
I guess I was expecting a little more substance to the post. It seems like a
long-winded for the little substance in it.

~~~
hardlianotion
I think it was an April 1 post and served its purpose well I would say!

~~~
jimktrains2
I didn't even look at the date! /me facepalms

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squozzer
What?!?!?! No separate linking step?!?!?! Heresy, says I.

