Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!road!khb From: khb@road.Sun.COM (road) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Two Fortran Standards Message-ID: <123964@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 30 Aug 89 05:49:51 GMT References: <282@unmvax.unm.edu> <303@unmvax.unm.edu> <1598@convex.UUCP> <123897@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1624@convex.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (road) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 51 In article <1624@convex.UUCP> psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith) writes: > > horror stories about using f8x with f77 existing code ... >So, producing pure Modern Fortran 8x programs is not without it's >problems either. When I first started tracking the standard effort in '85 I took the overview then being presented by the chair, the co-chair and misc. luminaries at ACM '85 and dummied up nice interfaces to the library I was then involved in supporting. Everyone who saw the new interface wanted it, and wanted it yesterday. The only changes necessary were to the variable declarations. No changes to the body of the code was required. I do not believe that it will be very difficult to move the vast majority of existing codes to f8x ... I have only seen a few million lines, so perhaps I am missing something. .... >some are currently planning to rewrite their codes in C or Ada >instead. Those of us who have tried the exercise see a good slowdown from 20% to 500% depending on machine. > > >You should try Ada, Keith. You'd love it and it's available today. I have. I do not think it suitable for mathematical programming, such as I used to specialize in. > >Ada was DESIGNED to have all the capabilities you want in FORTRAN. Not by a long shot. Furthermore features that it should have for real time programming simply don't work (try to write code which executes every 100ms, say. Or take Guy Steele's old challenge to write a correct device driver). >They were not ADDED ON as in Fortran 8x. In Ada, all the features are >integrated and all work as one language. F8x as it existed in 1985 was much more suited to my needs. As it stands it is still much better than Ada. Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. !! kbierman@sun.com It's Not My Fault | MTS --Only my work belongs to Sun* I Voted for Bill & | Advanced Languages/Floating Point Group Opus | "When the going gets Weird .. the Weird turn PRO"