Significant whitespace

[David Robinow]

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> In article <mailman.386.1262576043.28905.python-list at python.org>,
>  David Robinow <drobinow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 8:09 PM, Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:
>> > More than "not required", it was "not relevant".  This led to one of the
>> > most infamous programming blunders in the early days of the space program,
>> > when one programmer accidentially typed a period instead of a comma
>> > resulting in the loss of a satellite:
>> Interesting story. Did you make it up?
>
> It's a fairly well known story.
>
> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/5.64.html#subj4.2
 Sure. But the question is, "Who made it up?"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fortran

Computer folklore has incorrectly attributed the loss of the Mariner 1
space probe to a syntax error in a Fortran program. For example,
"Recall the first American space probe to Venus, reportedly lost
because Fortran cannot recognize a missing comma in a DO statement…"[