🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <> donn@utah-cs.UUCP writes:
>I wasn't going to get into this discussion, since my opinions on f77
>are well known and (in part) unprintable, but I decided I ought to
>contribute a few remarks on Mr. Freyburger's article...
>
>	From: doug@escher.UUCP (Douglas J Freyburger)
>
>	I'm sorry, but I have troubles giving credit to a compiler that
>	is fully 30% slower than a competitors compiler for the same
>	machine architecture in the same language.
>
>>>>>>>>>>  etc.  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I sympathize with the Freyburgers and am grateful to the Seeleys of the 
world.  But what I wonder is why DEC doesn't market a version of their
FORTRAN compiler that will run under UNIX, or at least under ULTRIX!!
Seems that it shouldn't take them too much work (I speak from blissful
ignorance), and would require only a few extensions:  ability to link
to C programs, and ability to get UNIX command-line arguments.

Some context:  we do biological image processing, for which all the 
programs are in C, and have many wierd devices on line whose drivers were
easier to write under UNIX than they would have been under VMS.  We also do
molecular modeling, for which most of the code is in FORTRAN, much of it
ported from VMS sites.  We're thinking of going to VMS, at which point
we'll have to shell out additional mucho bucks for DEC's FORTRAN...  if
we could shell it out now and run under UNIX, we'd have the best of
both worlds....


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Are you listening, DEC? <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Peter S. Shenkin		philabs!cubsvax!peters
Columbia Univ., Department of Biological Sciences.