Fortran Quotes & Sayings

FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. — Edsger Dijkstra

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN. — Alan Perlis

I was impressed by the scene in Apollo 13 where the astronauts request confirmation of their calculations and several people at Mission Control dive for their slide rules. For several months after that, my standard response to statements like "We must implement multi-processor object-oriented Java-based client-server technologies immediately!" was "You know, FORTRAN and slide rules put men on the moon and got them back safely multiple times."
Tended to shut them up, at least for a moment. — Matt Roberts

If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran. If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases — Guy Steele

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. — Philip Greenspun

FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular. — Ken Thompson

Betty Snyder, who, under her married name, Betty Holberton, went on to become a pioneer programmer who helped develop the COBOL and Fortran languages, — Walter Isaacson

I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran. — Tony Hoare

Real programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. — Tom Van Vleck

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. — Alan Perlis

Grant, if we edited Fortran, I assume that you'd put a column thing in there. — Ken Thompson

In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included. — Edsger Dijkstra

Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days. — Marvin Minsky