🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug21.153733.5683@coe.montana.edu> oususalg@cs.montana.edu (Glassy) writes:
>In article <1992Aug21.144444.11414@ncsu.edu> jwb@eos.ncsu.edu writes:
>!Mike Coughlin writes:
>	[...Fortran works...]
>
>!Of course one can express "scientific and mathematical computations"
>!in Fortran, C, TeX, PostScript, etc.  However, the tremendous interest
>!in "object-oriented" programming among engineers and scientists shows
>!that they have finally come to realize that the structure and
>!organization of data are important---not exactly one of Fortran's
>!strong points.                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Have you taken a look at Fortran-90 lately?  If you have, you'll have
>noted that the structure and organization of data are indeed strong
>points in F90.  As far as the recent (1980-present) fashionable
>interest in object-oriented this-and-that, F90 supports data-hiding via
>modules, generic subprograms, operator and function overloading...

Seeing as how I haven't seen any Fortran-90 compilers around, the
improved features in this "new" language are largely irrelevant.  From
what I can see, most of the people that have been writing code in
Fortran are still using the features of Fortran-77.  

If you develop F90 code, you're throwing away portability, because
it's not clear that many people actually have access to a F90
compiler.  It certainly isn't something that gets bundled as the
"standard Fortran compiler" on the university mainframes.  If YOU
develop F90 code, I certainly won't be able to use it, because between
the dozen or so different systems I have access to, NONE of them has
an F90 compiler.  Several of them have quite nice F77 compilers...
All of them have C (in at least K&R form), some have C++, most have
Lisp, and some have Forth.  No F90 on the list...

The even BIGGER problem is the fact that these improved features
really make it a new language.  The fact that it may be backwards
compatible is NOT a bonus.  It just means that a lot of people will
continue to write "old style" FORTRAN code, and just ignore the
features that have been added.  And the people that want to go OOP
will have to do it in what is, in essence, a new language.  And
this means that there's not much cost to ACTUALLY going to a new
language, like C++.

Scientists and engineers use FORTRAN because it is the language that
they were taught.  I would be surprised if there are very many
universities that are teaching their new undergrads FORTRAN-90 right
now.  They're either teaching F77, because they have (a) Texts for
that, (b) Compilers for that, and (c) Instructors with 15 years of
experience at teaching FORTRAN-77.

FORTRAN 77 will never die - like it or not - and I seriously doubt
that it will be supplanted by FORTRAN 90.

-- 
Christopher Browne
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca
University of Ottawa
Master of System Science Program