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Posts from Steve Lionel (Intel) 
 |
My life in an online community began on the PLATO IV system in 1974, continued on ARPANET in the late 1970s, CompuServe and then this newfangled Internet tube-thingy. I joined Intel in 2001 coming from DEC/Compaq where I was a Fortran compiler developer. Nowadays I focus more on the support and "evangelizing" side of things, including my "Doctor Fortran" column which I started in 1998 and which I suppose could be considered a blog. I've been in the same office in Nashua, New Hampshire, since 1988, but I'm on my third company badge. Outside of work I like to read science fiction, build web sites and travel. |
MIXing it up with Donald Knuth
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on April 28, 2008 at 7:23 am
Comments (3)
The other day, I ran across an interesting interview with Donald Knuth. Knuth, of course, is world-famous as the creator of the Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures (1 potrzebie = The thickness of issue #26 of MAD Magazine - just ask Google!) Only slightly less known is Knuth's series of books The Art of [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Dick Hustvedt, the consummate software engineer
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on April 23, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Comments (3)
I've written a couple of "farewell" posts before, but this one is personal. I learned today that Dick Hustvedt died last week, and my heart is heavy. As I knew him, Dick was one of the principal architects and developers of the VAX/VMS operating system and a major force behind the development of the VAXcluster. I [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Doctor, it hurts when I do this!
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on March 31, 2008 at 10:52 am
Comments (1)
It is often said that you can write bad code in any language, and I certainly can't argue with that. I do find, though, that the worst-looking code comes from programmers who are more familiar with another programming language. One can often tell that a C programmer wrote Fortran code, or that a [...]
Category: Software Engineering
You Are In a Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Alike
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on August 22, 2007 at 7:09 am
Comments (3)
MAGIC WORD XYZZY For computer geeks of a certain age, such as yours truly, it was an opportunity to relive the glorious past when Dennis Jerz announced that an early 1977 version of Will Crowther's Adventure game source code had been discovered. Adventure was one of the first puzzle-exploration games and it not only captured the [...]
Category: Gaming, Software Engineering
Not Dead Yet!
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on May 25, 2007 at 5:58 am
Comments (6)
At least once a week, I see someone refer to Fortran as a "dead" language. A recent interview I did included asking me if I worried about my job since "many people say there is no future in Fortran". So it was with some amusement that I ran across an article on the Computerworld web site [...]
Category: Software Engineering
And a Farewell to John
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on March 20, 2007 at 5:38 am
Comments (0)
John Backus, the creator of Fortran, passed away Saturday, March 17, at the age of 82. The New York Times has a nice obituary. I never met Mr. Backus, but my life and career has certainly been inflienced by his work.
Category: Software Engineering
A Farewell to Jean
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on March 5, 2007 at 8:38 am
Comments (3)
If you asked me what my favorite programming language is, you might be surprised when I don't say Fortran. No, my favorite is Ada, the language named for the first computer programmer and the result of an international competition sponsored by the US Department of Defense. Jean Ichbiah, the creator of the "Green" language which [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Powerful Beyond Imagination
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on November 16, 2006 at 2:57 am
Comments (2)
No, the title of this post isn't intended to refer to the new quad-core processors Intel announced yesterday (as I write this), though I suppose it could. Rather, it's the slogan of this year's SC06 (Supercomputing 2006) conference, whose US edition this year is being held in sunny Tampa, Florida. And yours truly is there. This [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Domestic or Imported?
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on October 5, 2006 at 3:15 am
Comments (5)
One day while I was wandering the aisles of my local grocery store, a woman beckoned me over to a table and asked if I would like to "try some imported chocolate?" Neatly arrayed on the table were packages of Lindt, Toblerone, and... Ghiradelli? I asked the woman if California had seceded from the Union, [...]
Category: Software Engineering
The long and winding road
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on September 25, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Comments (0)
The other day, I posted something in comp.lang.fortran in response to a post asking for a new feature in the Intel Fortran compiler. I suggested that the best thing to do was to submit an issue to Intel Premier Support asking for the feature since the more customers who ask for a feature, the easier [...]
Category: Software Engineering
Nifty Fifty!
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on July 24, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Comments (3)
2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Fortran language, which was first introduced in 1957. The British Computer Society is sponsoring a retrospective on Fortran in January - perhaps there will be a US event as well. Like most programming languages, Fortran, or FORTRAN as it was known back then, has gone through a lot [...]
Category: Software Engineering
The Doctor is IN!
By Steve Lionel (Intel) (12 posts) on July 11, 2006 at 8:00 am
Comments (5)
.. testing. testing... Is this thing on? Oh, hi! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Doctor Fortran 2.0. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Steve Lionel, and I work for Intel's Developer Products Division. For the past four years, I've been part of Intel's compiler support team, but before that I spent nearly a [...]