🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <41910@skye.dcs.ed.ac.uk> gvw@epcc.ed.ac.uk (Greg Wilson) writes:
>  I regularly lambast physicists for using "old" languages like Fortran,
>  so I feel I should set a good example for students by using some
>  modern ideas myself)

   First of all, I have a PhD in Physics and it is true that like most
physicists that I know, I have never taken a course in computer science.  I
learned Fortran (from the VAX/VMS Fortran manual) because I was presented a
problem which required a numerical solution and the only available canned
routines were in Fortran.  Since that time, I have taught myself pascal, C,
and Lisp and I consider myself to be a better C programmer than most and I
feel much more comfortable with C than I do with Fortran.  However, I still
feel that Fortran is superior to C for numerical work in many respects.  The
ANSI C has improved the situation a bit (Old K&R C might take something like
`x = (a * b) / c' and rearrange it as `x = a * (b / c)' which could be deadly
for many algorithms).  In addition, C has nothing equivalent to Fortrans **
operator nor does it have complex types.  And arrays, C has no true array type
like Fortran does (One must use pointers to pointers ... to pointers).  Yes
Fortran is still superior to C for what it is intended to do: Numerical Work.
Anyone who ``regularly lambast physicists for using "old" languages like
Fortran'' is a little ignorant in my view.

  The only real thing that I miss in Fortran 77 is a pointer type.  There are
many times when I wanted to pass pointers to functions through common blocks.


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