the python name

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2019-01-04 11:34:24 -0500, Avi Gross wrote:
> Although I used FORTRAN ages ago and it still seems to be in active
> use, I am not clear on why the name FORMULA TRANSLATOR was chosen.

Keep in mind that FORTRAN was one of the very first languages which
didn't have a 1:1 mapping to machine code. A programmer could actually
write a formula (instead of a sequence of machine instructions), and the
compiler would translate it into machine code.

So I guess "formula translator" was an apt description of what was seen
as the main benefit over earlier systems.

> I do agree it does sound more like a computer language based on both
> the sound and feel of FORTRAN as well as the expanded version.

FORTRAN is older than most of us. So it influenced what we think a
computer language should sound like.


> It seems to have been designed as a mathematical extension of sorts
> that allowed you to evaluate a mathematical formula efficiently. I
> mean things like quadratic equations. But there is overlap with what
> other languages like COBOL or BASIC did at the time.

Both COBOL and BASIC were invented after FORTRAN. And I'm not sure
whether COBOL's COMPUTE statement was in the language from the beginning
or a later addition.

> 
> What gets me is the vagueness of the words looked at by ME today. Any
> modern computing language can do what standard FORTRAN does,

The shoulders of giants and all that.


> albeit perhaps more slowly as I know some languages do some of their
> math using libraries from FORTRAN. But do we use the word TRANSLATOR
> quite that way much anymore?

No. Today we use the word "compiler". Jargon has evolved.

> Heck, do we use FORMULA in the same way?

Probably yes, but we don't think automatically translating formulas into
machine code is in any way remarkable any more. After all, that problem
was solved 60+ years ago. Today's buzzword is "algorithm" (usually used
incorrectly by the media).

> My most recent use of formula has been in the R language where there
> is a distinct object type called a formula that can be used to specify
> models when doing things like a regression on data. I am more likely
> to call the other kind using words like "equation". Python has an
> add-on that does symbolic manipulation. Did FORTRAN have any of these
> enhanced objects back when created, or even now?

Certainly not then. Probably not now. Fortran isn't about symbolic
manipulation. It's about number crunching. And in the beginning it was
mostly about not having to write assembler.

        hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) |                    | because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson <https://www.edge.org/>
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