There are people trying to preserve significant old computer designs and 
operating systems in a form most likely to survive going forward such as simh.  
There are also people trying to preserve significant old programs in a form 
most likely to survive going forward.  Being in a simh forum it isn't 
surprising to find more of the first type.  There is room for everyone and it 
is all good.

> On Feb 3, 2018, at 5:05 AM, Bob Eager <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 03 Feb 2018 00:37:25 -0500
> Phil Budne <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>>> Last year Eric Raymond (The Cathedral And The Bazaar guy) and a few
>>> others took the ugly machine translated C code from the last known
>>> Fortran version and rewrote/structured it into something that is
>>> much more readable and maintainable.  
>> 
>> To (apparently) quote the new version(*): "Well, that was remarkably
>> pointless."
>> 
>> To me, a GREAT part of the magic of the original game is that it makes
>> a silk purse using a sow's ear (and my first two paying programming
>> jobs were using FORTRAN, and then working on a FORTRAN compiler)!
>> 
>> I recall thinking the tables (back before we called them data
>> structures) were a thing of beauty when I first saw them.
>> 
>> (*) http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-adventure/notes.html
> 
> I agree about the silk purse comment.
> 
> I have a copy of 'ed' in FORTRAN; it was very useful sometimes.
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