Being safe on the internet (was Re: Here we go again - ISP DPI, but is it interception?)

[Tom Thomson]

> Programmers don't need all these abstract concepts to get their
> jobs done-- they are perfectly happy with a keypunch, a Fortran IV
> compiler, and a beer.

Fortran IV?!*%!???

Real Programmers hated it.

The standards committee met and discussed what should be in the standard.  Manufacturer A didn't have Z in his compiler, so would make the committee sessions hell if Z were not excluded.  Manufacturer B didn't have Y in his compiler, so would ...
And so on.  And so on.  Ad nauseam.

And lo and behold, the Fortran IV standard was published.  And instead of consolidating those things that most manufacturers had done (no-one expected it to include things that most manufacturer's had not done) it threw away ALL the advances that had been made in the preceding years, and gave us a language that was hated by every Fortran programmer in the world, except those for whom Fortran IV was their first language.

M.