On Wed, 15 Jan 2025 01:01:12 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote:
>
>Or, going back farther, I'd change some thing in PL/I, e.g., retain the ALGOL
>60 distinction between assignment and equality.
>
It may have started with FORTRAN (which lacked relational operators.)
In the day I knew some mini computer languages which distinguished
assignments with a token such as:
LET X = A + B
I worked next to a physics graduate student who wrote a FORTRAN
program with a matrix of assignments that visually resembled a
system of linear equations. Somehow, with remarkable persistence,
he got it to compile and print out a vector of variables.
Only *then* he asked me for help: "Why did it not solve my system‽"
==
gil
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