1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
where I, too, learned FORTRAN, July 16, 2011
This review is from: Guide to Fortran IV Programming (Paperback)
The pedagogic approach in this classic book is undeniably archaic, but the material is thorough. If you've mastered McCracken, including his appendices, you know your FORTRAN IV. (Why is this important? Knowing what F-IV function converts a DOUBLE to an INTEGER is, to me, analogous to Cmdr. Riker being able to satisfy Capt. Picard's seemingly quaint request [in "Encounter at Farpoint"] that he dock the Enterprise _manually_ : ability fluently to use outdated tools is the true mark of a most senior authority.) McCracken's suggestions for term projects (e.g., chess-playing, which he starts with "simple" [though they weren't simple back then!] functions to display a chess position or to determine whether either king is in check in a given position) are still valid today. The appendices--demonstrating, for example, how one uses a time-sharing system (which was, then, quite newfangled) and works with a text editor--are classic expositions.
I recall with crystal-clarity when Larry L. referred this to me as a 13-year-old high-school junior taking a special summer course at Polytechnic. We did amazing things back then (in 1976), including programming simulations (punch cards, of course!) in CSMP, GPSS, and DYNAMO-II; programming analog computers (this came in handy in engineering school, when we used the same as an exercise in real-time solution of linear differential equations); and solving for node voltages and branch currents in passive RLC circuits. Those were the days!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Where I learned FORTRAN, September 27, 2010
This review is from: Guide to Fortran IV Programming (Paperback)
This book was recommended to me back in my undergraduate college days from a fellow student who knew a lot about computers than I did. I found it to be a good introduction to the subject. For someone studying FORTRAN today, they might find it somewhat lacking in that it does not deal with the more recent capabilities of FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 95, such as how to more easily enable calculations involving matrices--as these more recent dialects more efficiently allow the programmer to perform.
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