C translator for calculator project

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(05-12-2019 10:49 AM)Dan Wrote:  That makes a lot of sense, perhaps the following to start with:

1) Assignment operator e.g. count := count + 1, arithmetic, relational and logical operators
2) if-then, if-then-else and case
3) while do and for loops with exit
4) procedure, which can return values

Operators can then be added as the program develops.

Did I already mention FORTRAN ;-)

And answering a posting higher above: Fortran is long from dead or obsolete, even if Wikipedia thinks differently. I studied aerospace engineering in the 1980ies. In our field, everyting was written in Fortran then and a Fortran course was a mandatory part of our training combined with a course on numeric methods for solving differential equations.

As long as my generation of engineers is still busy (retirement is 10 years away) designing airliners, spacecraft, road vehicles, race cars, optimise trajectories of space probes, analyse the dynamic properties of large lighweight structures - on earth and in space, model the multiphase flow within steam turbines of powerplants, model the flow of air around buildings and bridges, etc. Fortran will remain a part of this world.

There is no need for an object oriented approach or pointer arithmetic or a smart user interface if one needs to compute the trajectory of an asteroid for the next 25 years. But this kind of task requires precision (as much of it as one can get - the Cray fortran compilers had an "AUTODBL" flag which would double the precision of the calculation once more, even if it had been written in double precisionin the first place) and a simple and efficient way of coding - and understanding other people's code - that can be done by the engineer/scientist himself. Without requiring an extra degree in IT.

No wonder many large program packages for computer aided design, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), computational structure analysis, global climate modeling, ocean modeling (both of which are special cases of CFD), orbital dynamics, computational quantum chemistry, or astronomy/astrometry (example: https://aa.usno.navy.mil/software/novas/..._intro.php) are still written in Fortran or at least around Fortran cores.

And as an example here is one of many very recent papers on the subject (this one from NASA): https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi....000413.pdf

Happy programming!
Max