Fortran 77 programming in FreeDOS

[@ahmad-murery]

Never touched FORTRAN but I did similar programs in BASIC and plot the result graphically on the screen, I still miss those happy moments, the smell, the floppy disk and fan noise. I would like to see more and more of these programming videos, they are so soothing, Thanks Jim

[@freedosproject]

I'm planning more! 👍

[@karhukivi]

Excellent! I programmed in Fortran back in the 70s and have just come across some very useful software in Fortran that is impossible to buy nowadays so I will have to get an emulator and start to enter the code from the keyboard. Your video was just the right encouragement to get started on it, many thanks!

[@freedosproject]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

[@brucewilliams6265]

I agree. I started Fortran in the 1970's (punched card at University) and was always in love with Fortran Great video which brings back great memories. I used the Microsoft Fortran which was no good as it broke the environment. Microsoft dumped it as too hard.

[@pikuma]

Oh, that brings back memories from my physics modules. :)

[@freedosproject]

Same here! For one lab, we had to take data on a damped circular pendulum (weighted bike tire, with different kinds of brakes) and write a RK differential equation numerical solution in F77 as part of our data analysis. By tweaking the different parameters, we were able to get our numerical solution plot to more-or-less overlap the data plot. That was a tough one.

[@Shawnsteroz]

Thanks for posting this video. I'm just setting up the WF Compiler. It brings back memories of programming in BASIC and F77 in the late 80s as an undergraduate in Engineering at Curtin Uni in Perth Aust. I have collected a number of books on numerical methods and old F77 programs to try, but never had much luck finding a decent compiler until now. 35yrs later. I used the MS F77 version on my laptop, to avoid having to go to the Lab and do it there. I have largely forgotten the coding, but I think it will come back if I try a few programs. We did one using the GJEM for a pipe network, where I had to verify the flows with my old calculator, the matrix was like 12x12, so just entering that and inverting it, took ages compared to the F77 routine.

[@donaldwilliams6821]

Very cool. I learned Fortran in high school on a PDP-11 with PUNCH CARDS! What a pain in the butt! For fun I installed gfortran on Linux and it doesn't like the "C" for comments, the * works fine. Thanks for this.

[@freedosproject]

I use gfortran on Linux sometimes, and it allows the "C" in col 1 for comments. Not sure why you're finding otherwise.

[@sirgalahamtroskipero4872]

Thank you for this tutorial. I just created a program that calculates a quadratic equation and it has been a pleasant experience!

[@freedosproject]

Glad it helped!

[@TheJFGB93]

Thanks for sharing! My father had to learn Fortran when he studied at the University back in the '80s, and, as I understand, even his thesis needed to have a program made in that language. My only approach to the language is a book my father keeps from that time, and if memory doesn't fail me, it's for Fortran '66 (published in '69).

[@TheJFGB93]

I should add that this video finally made me understand how programs work in this language. When I tried back in the day, I didn't really understand (I hadn't even learned physics or trigonometry at the age I tried).

[@freedosproject]

Thanks so much for saying that! I love it when folks find the programming videos useful. I'm glad that this video helped explain how programs work in Fortran. I keep writing "Fortran" but really it's all uppercase "FORTRAN" if it's FORTRAN77 or earlier, and Title case "Fortran" if it's Fortran90.

[@PixelOutlaw]

Nice to see long standing languages still running well enough. I'd love to see a Lisp dialect on FreeDOS but I'm not sure how you'd copy code and paste code into the REPL even if you managed to compile one from C sources. I heard there is an Emacs like editor, if that has it's own clipboard and can emulate a terminal in one window and the text editor in the other that might work...

[@freedosproject]

There is a GNU Emacs port to DOS that you can find on the DJGPP website. I imagine that will do what you're looking for. ☺

[@xenaretos]

As a physics student, did quite a bit of Fortran in the mid and late 2000s. Although, it was mostly Fortran 90 under linux (even with some parallel calculations using MPI library) and windows. Didn't feel all that bad (since I lacked some more modern programming experience) but the basic UI things it couldn't do were quite ridiculous.

[@freedosproject]

I never used Fortran90, I only programmed in FORTRAN77 (and dealt with a bit of FORTRAN-IV code, during an internship). Since FORTRAN was originally created in an era before "terminals" it doesn't have concepts like a "user interface." Anything that does that on FORTRAN is going to be very specific to the compiler and platform it runs on.

[@KD5NJR]

I loved watching this !

[@kamertonaudiophileplayer847]

Exactly. But then we tried to use PL/I. It is for solving eugen values.

[@sarfrazhussain8892]

Sir, I have also studied FORTRAN 77 in DOS editor in 1991 and used 5.25 and 3.25 Floppy Disks but all compilers are destroyed, how can now I obtain FORTRAN COMPILER in DOS EDITOR with your kind help and instructions with great please

[@freedosproject]

You should install OpenWatcom Fortran77. If you're running FreeDOS 1.3, you can use FDIMPLES to install it from the BonusCD. You'll find it under "Development" at the bottom of the list. See 0:40 in the video.

[@NotNoAndrew]

Never did Fortran, I am glad. I learned RPG in school and I had a hard time with the spacing. Thanks for showing it off.

[@freedosproject]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@OpenGL4ever]

Thank you for the video.

[@freedosproject]

Thanks for watching!

[@LaurentLaborde]

modern fortran compiler produce extremely optimized executable (autovectorization, autoparallelization, ...). While I don't expect this from an old DOS fortran compiler. How does it compare in runtime execution speed with watcom c for numerical computation ? or even djgpp ? (of course fortran, even F77, is easier to write than C). Assuming freedom 1.3. Also, can I openMPI ? :) thank you.

[@freedosproject]

I haven't done a lot with FORTRAN programming. I do a little FORTRAN programming here and here, but only for side projects, and nothing really big. So I haven't explored compiler optimization using the OW F77 compiler.

[@LaurentLaborde]

@@freedosproject okay thanks. I'll benchmark it myself I guess. once I find out how to have useable floating point in C :D

[@РусланЗаурбеков-з6е]

Can FreeDOS editor do syntax highlighting??

[@freedosproject]

The FreeDOS EDIT editor does not do syntax highlighting. For syntax highlighting, I use the FED editor. I could have used FED and created a SYN stanza for F77, I suppose. But F77 is a weird language (not space sensitive, but column sensitive) so proper syntax highlighting in F77 would be an interesting challenge. I figured F77 is straightforward enough that we can use EDIT for editing our source code.

[@jamesmy6044]

if i try to start the compiler it says bad command or filename. even i installed the compiler

[@freedosproject]

That message means you don't have the compiler in your PATH variable. Around 1:00 into the video, I run the OWSETENV.BAT program that sets the PATH for you. You'll need to CD into the \DEVEL\WATCOMF directory and run OWSETENV - then things should work for you.

[@jamesmy6044]

Thank you. I did that but i shut down the PC . I guess i have to do that every time @@freedosproject

[@freedosproject]

@@jamesmy6044 That's right. Environment changes you make on the command line do not "persist" between reboots, so you'll need to do that every time. Or if you know you'll be working with the F77 compiler all the time, you can copy the OWSETENV.BAT lines to your FDAUTO.BAT file. But since DOS memory is usually limited, you might only run OWSETENV.BAT when you need it. That's what I do. In fact, I appended an alias for FED (which is not in my PATH) at the end of OWSETENV.BAT - if I can't run FED, then I know I haven't run OWSETENV.BAT yet. I only use FED for programming.

[@philtoa334]

Nice.

[@nadorlife563]

Hello sir, thanks for this video, please i want to download the free dos, and i dont find it in google, can you send to me the link for download

[@freedosproject]

Sure thing. We have a link in the description of every video. For example: Visit our website www.freedos.org/ So you can can go there to download FreeDOS 1.3. The direct link is www.freedos.org/download/

[@yuan.pingchen3056]

god, you remember all Fortran keyword and syntax .... are you human compiler?

[@freedosproject]

I used to do a lot of FORTRAN77 programming all the time at university. It was my go-to programming language for scientific analysis. So I just memorized all that stuff and I'm sometimes surprised how much of FORTRAN77 I still remember.

[@FrancoBugnano]

In Fortran GOD is REAL, unless declared INTEGER

[@freedosproject]

Ah, the implicit integer range, IJKLMN.

[@FrancoBugnano]

@@freedosproject After looking at a Fortran program, I have a much higher appreciacion on how far we've got with modern programming languages.

[@deterdamel7380]

Thanks for this lession. I'm happy that I never make use of this ugly programming language..

[@freedosproject]

It wasn't so bad if you wrote programs in it every day. That said, I do prefer C for most of my programming work.