>>>>So, simply trust those that do that for life. Like you trust a CPU designer, a car maker or what ever.
>>>
>>>I am one of those that "did it for life" , well for 45 years, anyway. I started on "mainframes" using SAS and SPSS before there were PC's. I moved to FOX in the middle 90's because the pay was good and it was a good way to collect data. I still used SPSS to analyze the data.
>>
>>No BMDP ? Nothing from "Numerical Recipes" first in FORTRAN, then in C, as basis for own code ?
>>
In the middle 70's my boss gave me a choice of SPSS or Bio-Med so I looked them both over and selected SPSS.
The only practical work I had with FORTRAN was helping one of my college roommates write some programs to assist in designing trusses. Eventually the programs were the cause of him being fired. He had access to computers at Georgia Tech and at night he would run his programs and show up for work "around 10AM". His boss thought he should come in at 8AM like the other engineers and bring his programs into work and let the other engineers use them - FOR FREE.
My roommate thought otherwise. Anyway things worked out OK for him. The owner of the next company he worked for really liked him and financed him the purchase of the company about 3 years later. I'm sure you have seen the rubber tired vehicles that put down steel wheels and run on railroad tracks, By 1990 he had 2/3 of the North American market.
>>curious
>>thomas
>
>Yes, Fortran and the IMSL