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FORTRAN coding form

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graybeard:
I found a folder full of these FORTRAN coding forms in a collection of graph paper that belonged to my father.   These were for hand coding programs for entry on to IBM punch cards on a keypunch machine.

Chris

DrG:

--- Quote from: graybeard on December 30, 2021, 06:26:01 am ---I found a folder full of these FORTRAN coding forms in a collection of graph paper that belonged to my father.   These were for hand coding programs for entry on to IBM punch cards on a keypunch machine.

Chris

--- End quote ---

Love it!

I don't have any that old, but do still have one of these pads for BASIC, from the Shack...



...and on the other side, they gave you a screen template.

granzeier:

--- Quote from: graybeard on December 30, 2021, 06:26:01 am ---I found a folder full of these FORTRAN coding forms in a collection of graph paper that belonged to my father.   These were for hand coding programs for entry on to IBM punch cards on a keypunch machine.

Chris

--- End quote ---

--- Quote from: DrG on December 30, 2021, 02:44:02 pm ---...
I don't have any that old, but do still have one of these pads for BASIC, from the Shack...
...
--- End quote ---
Both of these forms were great, I used to have a bunch of both of them. The back side was great for screen design. I also had some for my Sinclair ZX-81; I laminated it, and used a grease pencil for designing screens.

Does anyone remember the cards which you filled out with a pencil to enter programs? The ones that I used were for our HP-2000, but I don't think that they were specific to the Time Share BASIC system.

IanB:
One interesting aspect of the original FORTRAN language is that your code had to be in columns 7 to 72. If you accidentally spilled over into column 73 those characters would be ignored. If you were lucky you would get a compiler error, but if you were unlucky the contents of columns 7 to 72 would still be valid and your program would silently do the wrong thing.

That's why these forms were useful, because it made clear the different significance of columns 1-5 (labels), column 6 (continuation), and columns 7 to 72 (code). Getting the columns right was a bit harder to do in an interactive text editor.

graybeard:

--- Quote from: IanB on December 30, 2021, 08:01:27 pm --- Getting the columns right was a bit harder to do in an interactive text editor.
--- End quote ---

When these forms were made in the 1950s or early 1960s I/O was an electric typewriter, paper tape, and punch cards.  There really was no such thing as an interactive text editor as we know them today.

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