🚀 go-pugleaf

ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig) writes:

>I think Modula-2 still has a good chance to replace FORTRAN as the
>primary language for scientific computing. It has FOR - loops which are
>as easily vectorizable or paralellizable as F-77 DO - loops (unlike C's
>half - baked for loops), will have COMPLEX (last time I checked a draft
>standard, anyway), its typechecking is better than either, etc. Ada, 
>F-90 and C++ suffer from too much complexity.

Scientists are hardly interested in the language they use
for implementing their algorithms, save the mathematicians and information
scientists. The language must be able to express the things they want to express,
the Nag lib should be available in it, and everybody else should be using it.
Furthermore, they tend to concentrate on the problem, not on the language.
I have some firsthand experience: I studied physics at Eindhoven University of
Technology. We used Burroughs Extended Algol to do our number crunching, and
we loved it. It's not as expressive as Pascal or Modula 2, but it worked.
However, the Dutch Government, which subsidises education to a large part, decided
in their infinite wisdom that all universities should go IBM and DEC. So out went
our B7900 and BEA, and in came Big Blue and FORTRAN: yes, they made a switch from
an Algol-like language to FORTRAN. Why not, you have Nag (we had that in BEA as well,
but OK), and the rest of the world uses it. Glad I had graduated by then.

>It would be a real shame to leave the field of scientific computation to
>FORTRAN or C.

I agree, but that's reality.

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