Episode 42: Fortran

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Introduction: Strong/Weak Typing & https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

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News

• Disque - Redis for message passing
• https://github.com/antirez/disque
• Amazon profits from AWS 
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/technology/amazon-reports-big-profits-in-its-cloud-computing-business.html
• jq: command line JSON parser
• http://stedolan.github.io/jq/
• China attacking github
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9275041

Book of the Show

• Jason: A Theory of Fun in Game Design
• http://amzn.to/1FShtR6
• Patrick: Monster Hunter International
• http://amzn.to/1EeqWO2

Tool of the Show

• Jason: Babun
• http://babun.github.io/
• Patrick:  Crouton
• https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

Fortran

• Overview
• ForTran: Formula Translating System
• First optimizing compiler
• History
• First version designed by John W. Backus in 1953
• “20x fewer instructions than assembly”
• Writing programs for computing missile trajectories
• Punch-cards
• Mainframes
• Fortran still in use today
• Parts of scipy/matlab are in fortran
• LAPACK still in fortran
• Compilers
• G95
• GNU GFortran
• Pros
• Stickiness
• Punchcards!
• FREQUENCY directive: compiler performed a monte carlo simulation to place blocks
• Cons
• Pareto-dominated by more advanced languages