Storage B

I recently stumbled upon Google Trends. I though it might be interesting to compare the search volume for the first two computer languages I learned: Fortran vs. Algol

fortran    algol

The results are not too surprising, since Fortran is still widely used by scientists and engineers. Algol, which, according to The Retrocomputing Museum, is “the common ancestor of C, Pascal, Algol-68, Modula, Ada, and most other conventional languages that aren’t BASIC, FORTRAN, or COBOL,” isn’t used as much anymore.

3 Responses to “Fortran vs. Algol”

1. Karen says:

   May 14, 2006 at 11:21 am

   Good Gawd…and i *thought* I ever had a chance as tech-No-dweeb to catch up one of these days…YIKES!

   I haven’t a clue what this is about…*sigh*

   Just have to leave this techie stuff to all them Wizards out there on the Internets.

   Reply
2. JD says:

   May 17, 2006 at 9:29 am

   I learned Cobol over 20 years ago (showing my age), but have never used it since. Of course, Cobol’s linear structure, while straightforward and easy to understand, has completely gone out of favor as well, due to OOP. I think I’ll stick to web-friendly programming.

   Reply
3. rlrr says:

   May 17, 2006 at 12:22 pm

   I think I’ll stick to web-friendly programming.

   See Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

   Reply