OT: Language for the ages

[Jules Richardson]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
> This is actually not as hypothetical as it soiunds. 

Of course not :) I'd like to think that anything I write stands a chance 
of still being around in 30 years anyway; I'd say that longevity of code 
should be one of the goals of any programmer. It's like all aspects of 
good coding - think about it a little and you tend to end up adding it 
in automatically without really thinking about it.

> mess of features.  By and large, if you write a program in FORTRAN IV or
> 77, you can find a compiler for just about every machine ever made.

Or you can almost certainly find an emulator for that machine that'll 
emulate something else that *will* run Fortran...

It's a long time since I've done any Fortran (and I didn't particularly 
like it at the time :) but ISTR it being a pretty simple language to 
parse - which makes rolling your own parser in x years not completely 
out of the question...