Some genetic programs to supplement self-instruction in FORTRAN.
Jean W. MacCluer, Ronald W. Griffith, Charles F. Sing, William J. Schull · PubMed · 1967
As THE WORKSHOP progressed, we were repeatedly approached either to write or to assemble a series of computer programs which might be of value to human geneticists. These suggestions were undoubtedly prompted by the knowledge that a variety of such programs have already been developed at one institution or another, and the belief that it was desirable to attempt to make these programs as widely available as possible. Laudable as an undertaking of this kind may appear, it has many pitfalls. At the moment, and for the immediate future, the multitude of source languages and constantly changing hardware are serious barriers to an effective, general manual of computing programs. This unhappy state of affairs is tolerated with the belief that, in time, out of this array of men, machines, and logic will evolve more powerful languages and computers than are now in use or can be presently envisaged. To a user, however, the present is characterized more by promise than realized program and machine compatibility. All too frequently one encounters the complaint that a canned program, that is, one developed for a particular machine at a particular institution but made generally available, cannot be compiled and executed, without changes, on a seemingly identical machine at another institution. The nature of the changes which may be required under these circumstances can vary from relatively simple alterations of the input-output or dimension statements to a major change in the manner of execution of a specific portion or portions of the program. Be this as it may, the task of assembling a reasonably comprehensive manual seemed somewhat afield of the main purposes of the workshop, namely, to provide an introduction to programming and some notion of the uses to which computers have been put in human genetics. It can be argued, however, that a few not particularly complex programs might serve as a useful adjunct to programmed self-instruction in one of the many computer languages. We have, therefore, set out in the pages to follow a series of four simple programs with quite lmited objectives. An effort has been made to write all of the programs in a modified FORTRAN II. The modifications consist of the use of the more flexible FORTRAN IV input-output statements and representations of the common mathematical functions such as sine, cosine, etc. These changes seem war-