Back in the day, the FORTRAN standards committee reviewed a technical proposal called "Letter O considered harmful". I used to be able to find a link to the text of this proposal on the net, but it seems to have disappeared since the last time I looked for it -- the link disappeared off the relevant Wikipedia page and the only Google hits for the term are references back to Wikipedia. Does anyone happen to know a good repository of information about FORTRAN so that I could track it down, or even better, have a link to the proposal itself?
A:
Mentioned on Wikipedia, referred to as a joke / folklore. Doesn't surprise me TBH.
Will A
2010-10-10 21:22:53
It does get mentioned on Wikipedia -- in multiple places, even -- but there used to be a link on the Wiki pages that went straight to the text of the proposal. That's the sort of thing I'm after.
estanford
2010-10-10 21:24:34
@estanford Too bad Wikipedia doesn't keep a change history. Oh wai-
bzlm
2010-10-10 21:25:24
@bzlm I've been reviewing the change histories for a while now, but haven't had any luck. The last time I was able to find the link was years ago, so there's a lot of ground I need to cover to find the change.
estanford
2010-10-10 21:29:04
I consider this most likely a joke/folklore. I can't recall it from the distant past (70's)
MikeAinOz
2010-10-10 21:31:46
It was a tongue-and-cheek commentary on the great flowering of "X considered harmful" articles that came out after Dijkstra's original, as I recall. Someone submitted the article as a technical proposal that was read during the same committee session where the name FORTRAN77 was decided on.
estanford
2010-10-10 21:37:09
+1
A:
I think this is the guy to ask: Bruce A. Martin. He seems* to be the one who originally posted it on Wikipedia, and he puts himself as working at Brookhaven (where the article was circulated) at the same time.
The citation he gives on Wikipedia for the article is:
X3J3 post-meeting distribution for meeting held at Brookhaven National Laboratory in November 1976.
(* the user page for the user that posted it links to the website as being their material)
Porges
2010-10-12 10:03:02
This is a good lead. There's some suggestion on Open Standards (http://open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG5/3054) that the Letter O proposal may even have been written by him, or at least a proposal of the same name. I'm looking into it now.
estanford
2010-10-12 10:20:40
Funnily enough, if you Google for "Letter o considered harmful" and restrict the search range to pre-2004, I get the result http://www.j3-fortran.org/ ... but I've yet to find any mention on the site :)
Porges
2010-10-12 10:41:42