(Roughly) Daily

Photographer Dominic Episcopo is a man of ecumenical enthusiasms– fashion, reportage and editorial, portraiture… and food.  Not content with simple still life, “The United Steaks of America” makes his meat do double duty…

As we proclaim “well done,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1954 that the first test program in FORTRAN ran.  FORTRAN (The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System) was the first successful general purpose programming language, the first real alternative to assembly language.  It reduced the number of programming statements necessary to operate a machine by a factor of 20, so quickly gained acceptance.  It’s still in use, especially in high-performance computing.

FORTRAN coded on a punch card

Your correspondent is headed to parts distant, where connectivity is likely to be an issue.  So these missives won’t resume, at least at anything like their normal rhythm, for a week or so…