No comments about Modern Fortran 77/90.

No comments about Business Data Processing: COBOL and BASIC/FORTRAN versions also (Student Workbook).

2 comments about The Essentials of Fortran (Essentials).

1. It's short and has all the basics. I have been programming in C for a few years and had to do some Fortan programming. I bought this book only and it was a breeze to wade through. Smolarski writes very clearly and it's only 120 pages so it reads very easily. The only bad thing is that certain parts towards the end are not clear in the absence of examples. One thing that bugged me was the absence of an example of the COMMON statement and a description of how one would use it. The ENTRY statement also suffers the same lack description and I had to consult a colleague to figure out how to use it.

   Overall, though, I am very pleased with the purchase. The price can't be beat and it's covers almost every aspect of F77.




2. This book makes no bones about it, it is The Essentials of FORTRAN. If you are already a programmer looking to get into FORTRAN programming, this book would be extremely helpful. If you aren't a programmer, however, this isn't where to start. Good orginization allows easy reference to topice you may need help with.

No comments about Fortran 77: Principles of Programming.

No comments about Fortran 77 for Scientists and Engineers.

No comments about Solutions manual to accompany Applied numerical methods for digital computation with FORTRAN and CSMP.

No comments about Structured Fortran With Watfiv.

1 comments about Advanced Programming Techniques: A Second Course in Programming Using Fortran.

1. Sometimes, very high quality source code is dumped onto the Internet just because it is old. For FORTRAN 77/90+ programmers that occasionally use or otherwise maintain legacy FORTRAN IV (a.k.a. FORTRAN 66) source code, this textbook provides valuable continuity back to the older standard. This title was published while the FORTRAN 77 standard was being finalized, so it still largely reflects the FORTRAN 66 standard - at the same time, it further discusses the up and coming FORTRAN 77 standard and the relationships between the two.

   The preliminary chapter (Chapter 0) is most valuable as it provides a concise overview of FORTRAN 66 in about 40 pages. Later chapters instruct on some of the long forgotten FORTRAN 66 tricks that sometimes cause the eyebrows of modern programmers to furrow when trying to understand inherited code. I also found this book to be very helpful in understanding the use of characters variables in FORTRAN 66, which may be foreign to the FORTRAN 77/90+ programmer use to explicitly declared characters variables. I regret that the book did not acknowledge some of the antiquated non-standard features such as ENCODE and DECODE commonly seen in old source code.

   Understandably, the actual presentation of FORTRAN 77 is less than complete, and the book is a self-proclaimed "advanced" book, so this is certainly not the best book from which to learn modern FORTRAN. And while there are other older books that can help one's understanding of FORTRAN 66, this hardback just also happens to be a fine tutorial on the subject on programming. Apparently, this title was quite popular and in print for many years.

No comments about Beginning Fortran: Simplified, 12-Statement Programming.

No comments about Introduction to computer systems and programming in architecture and construction.