I had a meeting with some folks about a certain program which calculates some important numbers (gotta be vague, I don’t want to be banned from KL).
Anyhow, they mentioned that the program is written in Fortran 77. When they asked their IT folks about maintaining the program, they were told that there were no Fortran programmers to be had.
I find that difficult to believe. When I was a young lad, it was Fortran or nothing to do engineering calcs. The famous Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) programmed in F (there was a C version if you were so inclined).
So, what language is taught nowadays to young Turks? If it’s BASIC, please murder your IT lecturer and bury the body during a moonless night. I assume it’s either C++ or one of the .NET languages. I wouldn’t think you’d do engineering calcs with Java or Perl or PHP, though I guess you could.
Anyhow, if you are pretty sharp with Fortran, let me know and I may keep you in mind for something in the future. Oh, and be familiar with VMS and DB2 as well.
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 
Back in uni, we were taught in both C++ and Fortran. Fortran was a 2 credit hour subject, so we did our fair bit of work with it.
It aint too bad, since its in DOS settings. Easy enough for most of us to understand.
I think my program still have that as part of the syllabus..
i started in turbo pascal. heck, why would we learn computer programming when there are 200 gazillion
computer graduates waiting to get a job
I’d rather see engineers learn the fundamentals of engineering. for starters, telling me the first law of thermodynamics after 4 years of chemical engineering!
By the way, i still remember our classmate did program a “horse racing” program for betting which is very similar to those actual gambling machines at the video arcade using turbo pascal.
Jabbathehutt: I guess you bought that Pascal horse racing program, and has been the basis of your empire?
the only thing the horse racing program can’t do is the coin dispensing.