Cobb: FORTRAN Man

October 23, 2003

FORTRAN Man

It gives me great pleasure to announce that I have found that the original cartoonist of FORTRAN Man is alive and well and living in the midwest. (Thanks to MJL) I'm sad to report that he, like I, is underappreciated by those capitalists who run things in this hemisphere, but the persistence of fond memory gives us joy in spite of that.

My memory fails me however when it comes to remembering which publication's editorial staff had the requisite sense of irreverence to include the offbeat humor. I tend to believe it was the original Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calasthenics & Orthodontia. But as you can imagine, they've gone corporate and relatively bloodless lo these many years. It's today that makes me think that yesterday wasn't even possible, but it most likey was Dobb's.

I hope one day to find a precious copy of one of those hilariously geeky cartoons. Hell, they might not even be funny any longer, but that's not the point of nostalgia is it? If you, like me, have fond memories of the good old days of cassette audiotape mass storage, just give a shout out here in the comments section. My website is currently the Googlistic center of gravity for 'The Adventures of Fortran Man'. Add to the huzzahs for Fortran Man and pretty Parity, and a big boo hiss for the evil Count Algol.

Posted by mbowen at October 23, 2003 04:34 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/929

Comments

I don't remember the FORTRAN Man cartoons. But, a few months ago I did stumble across an old audio cassette tape containing my BASIC programs coded on a TRS-80 back in high school. Also found in that box: a couple of small "rubber-banded" card-deck stacks containing programs (doubtlessly written in FORTRAN) from my college days. Man, I hated those key punch machines. I remember waiting around in the lab 'til 2 or 3 in the morning for a machine to come free so I could change a few lines of code. The last program I wrote on key-punch cards spanned more than a 1,000-pack box of cards. Those programs made for some heavy backpacks. I always felt so badly when I'd see someone drop their stack. I was very paranoid about it so I used markers to tag the cards at the beginning of subroutines and hand-numbered the cards in pencil to keep from going crazy. Then there would be the key-punch machines that didn't have a ribbon on the type-writer part so you had to hope you didn't make any typos. Ahhh...the good old days.

Posted by: Joanna at October 24, 2003 08:58 AM