In the early 1960s, I learned programming techniques and FORTRAN on my own from the IBM manuals obtained from the grad school computer center. This was a means to a selfish end: gain access to the school's IBM 1620 (20K memory) for a class reach project. Little did I know I had created "virtual" memory in the application because the data manipulations required using the connected hard drive to simulate memory.
A few years later I became VP of a NY business which needed my talents to save about 4,000 personnel hours per year and shorten certain cyclical billing cycles from six months to 30 days. Using FORTRAN on a timeshare computer, I developed a business application which accomplished these goals, and the computer took about 29 CPU seconds to run.
In the early 1970s, two college professors requested I collaborate with them and sell John Wiley & Sons (publishers) on the idea of us authoring a self-teaching paperback on how to program business applications in FORTRAN. The publisher took on the project with hesitation, but later experienced the text book becoming a best seller in the Americas (English and Spanish editions).
The takeaway from the above is one could write FORTRAN in a structured and self documented format, similar to COBOL. Furthermore, one could easily develop subroutines which performed text and formatting operations not inherent to native 66 and 77 FORTRAN, making it quite usable in the business community.
In the early 1960s, I learned programming techniques and FORTRAN on my own from the IBM manuals obtained from the grad school computer center. This was a means to a selfish end: gain access to the school's IBM 1620 (20K memory) for a class reach project. Little did I know I had created "virtual" memory in the application because the data manipulations required using the connected hard drive to simulate memory.
A few years later I became VP of a NY business which needed my talents to save about 4,000 personnel hours per year and shorten certain cyclical billing cycles from six months to 30 days. Using FORTRAN on a timeshare computer, I developed a business application which accomplished these goals, and the computer took about 29 CPU seconds to run.
In the early 1970s, two college professors requested I collaborate with them and sell John Wiley & Sons (publishers) on the idea of us authoring a self-teaching paperback on how to program business applications in FORTRAN. The publisher took on the project with hesitation, but later experienced the text book becoming a best seller in the Americas (English and Spanish editions).
The takeaway from the above is one could write FORTRAN in a structured and self documented format, similar to COBOL. Furthermore, one could easily develop subroutines which performed text and formatting operations not inherent to native 66 and 77 FORTRAN, making it quite usable in the business community.