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You are not the first one to ask :) We built Cobolsky. Will go public soon. Parallelly too curious on Fortran. The world is better with a Fortran-based social
by FormerLabFred 6mo ago
You are not the first one to ask :)
We built Cobolsky. Will go public soon.
Parallelly too curious on Fortran. The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it :)
When we are building the feed composer, in next version, Fortran will be great for the algorithm etc.
Keeping the ancient languages alive. I built some Cobol stuff many years ago. Back at it again. Rusty.
Both Cobolsky and Fortransky looks great on Swordfish90’s cool-retro-term, but we are building our own terminal for Fortransky too. There is a blog post with screenshots over at Patreon/formerlab
Can’t get enough Fortran
- embedding-shape 6mo ago> The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it If you don't mind me asking, why is the world better with more Fortran-based software?
- FormerLabFred 6mo agoOur modern languages are built on it, and it’s incredibly fast, so it deserves to be kept alive. We owe a great deal to the people who wrote it in the 1950s I guess
- embedding-shape 6mo ago> Our modern languages are built on it It's part of the lineage, yeah, probably started with Algol though? Fast I guess is always nice, but I'm not sure that's enough to keep it alive solely for that, at least to me.
- mathieudombrock 6mo agoI think the best answer you're really going to get here is that it's cool and fun to learn and use old languages.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoI'd agree with all of those reasons! I do so myself as well, was just specifically curious about the "The world is better with a Fortran-based social network client in it" part. Don't get me wrong, I've spent too many nights learning "dead" languages too, but never with the idea that the world would be better if I published more code in these dead languages, it's just for my own gratification and learnings.
- mountainriver 6mo agoThis thread makes me happy
- johnisgood 6mo agoI know right! I was pleasantly surprised. It has to be one of the greatest news I have heard in a while.
- hedora 6mo agoI came here to suggest COBOL as a better fit, then saw your comment a few levels up in this thread. Out of curiosity, does your implementation use CODASYL? (For people that don't pay much attention to historical software systems, most CODASYL implementations were similar to JSON document databases, so going that way isn't as crazy as it sounds.)
- FormerLabFred 6mo agoGreat comment! Thanks! No CODASYL, the JSON parser is hand-rolled Fortran with a depth-tracking key scanner CODASYL not a crazy direction for the feed composer Got more depth to explore here, still early :)
- hedora 6mo agoCODASYL is deeply integrated with COBOL; I'm not sure it ever even worked with fortran. (I was asking about the new COBOL version you mentioned.)
- Melatonic 6mo agoHow do COBOL and Fortran compare for something like this ?
- FormerLabFred 6mo agoCOBOL is more painful, Fortran better. Good you raised the topic, can write a blog post on it when we ship Cobolsky. Will be a proof of concept repo. Fortransky is the one (If AT Proto did fixed-width records instead of JSON, COBOL would be formidable)
- bee_rider 6mo agoWhich version of the language is it? It looks like you used Fortran90 at least (modules are used), which is pretty old, but not totally ancient like Fortran77. Anyway there are also 2018 and 2023 versions…
- johnisgood 6mo agoThank you for choosing Fortran. Seriously, I mean it. Someone else already said this, but it is awesome because it proves that you can write useful software using languages others consider ancient or dead and therefore "unusable". Keep up the great work!
- cat-turner 6mo agoYa know what? Rock on Fortran Friend. Keep doing what you are doing. We need more nerds passionate about Fortran.