Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!ncar!unmvax!brainerd From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Two Fortran Standards Keywords: Fortran standard Message-ID: <314@unmvax.unm.edu> Date: 30 Aug 89 16:24:00 GMT Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque Lines: 87 Here are some opinions I think should be of interest to this group regarding the recent discussion of two standards. This was sent by e-mail to all of X3J3 from JKING%MILO.Dec.Net@VM53.MACC.WISC.EDU ------------------------------------------------------------------- From: PHENOC::LONG "Bill Long" 29-AUG-1989 13:12:36.17 To: MILO::JKING CC: Subj: dual standards Hi Joe, Thanks for the copy of your dual standards letter. I hope this gets resolved (correctly) soon. Below I have appended the section from my commentary letter on the subject. It contains the same conclusions, but from a somewhat different perspective, and in my 'less diplomatic' language. I feel the section on teaching Fortran is especially important and has been ignored. If you want, you are welcome to circulate this message. Bill --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \sectionhead{V. Dual Standards} Separate from the current proposal, I would like to address an ongoing topic of the option of having two separate standards, one for Fortran 77 and another for 8X. Most of the discussion I have seen to date centers on the views of either vendors or the apparatus of standards formulation. My perspective is that of an active Fortran user in an academic setting. From this vantage point, the concept of a dual standard seems disastrous for several reasons. \subhead{User options.} The 8X proposal allows users to continue writing programs using only 77 features if they so choose. No one looses anything by replacing the 77 standard with 8X. Stick-in-the-mud programmers can stay stuck while those of us who want the new features can have them. \subhead{History.} One of the greatest virtues of Fortran is its dynamic nature. A language survives as long as Fortran has only by evolving and adopting new features to ``keep up with the times''. Well written, modern Fortran code would not be recognized as Fortran by someone from 1955. The current complaints about 8X are reminiscent of the mentality that claimed the sky would fall if such redundant and silly constructs as blocked-if or character variables were included in the 77 standard. Some of the current nay-sayers are as myopic as those twelve years ago. They might even be the same people! \subhead{Fortran teaching.} In its current state, computer science departments avoid teaching Fortran, preferring C or Pascal. In fact, use of Fortran is intentionally and vigorously discouraged as its an ``ancient'' and ``obsolete'' language. It does not bother me that the CS people do not use Fortran themselves. However, they have (and use) the power to block the physics department from teaching Fortran. Their own token Fortran course is negative in its presentation and pathetic in its content. The effects of these attitudes are starting to hit home. A whole generation of incoming physics graduate students do not know Fortran, a situation unimaginable only 5 years ago. The 8X proposal addresses and eliminates almost all grounds for the complaints of the computer science priesthood. They might even be willing to teach 8X rather than trying to assure the extinction of Fortran. Corporations and laboratories who hope to hire Fortran-literate scientists and engineers in the future should seriously consider this point and aggressively support the adoption of 8X. The pipeline is drying up rapidly. \subhead{Code portability.} The retention of the 77 standard will only encourage vendors to make their extensions to 77 ever more proprietary. This may boost the morale of their sales forces and fatten the bottom line in the near term, but it does the user a great disservice and defeats the whole concept of a standard. If there are two standards, will all vendors support both? Especially when the initial implementation of 8X will cost money? Which language will be ``Fortran''? \subhead{The cow.} The beneficiaries of adopting 8X are thousands, perhaps millions, of potential users. The beneficiaries of retaining 77 are vendors who can milk the 77 cash cow for a few more years. The committee has dangled an enticing vision of the future in front of the user community. I think the vendors under estimate the hostility users will show if there is continued resistance to 8X. A responsible vendor who can look beyond this quarter's financial report should have already started to implement 8X features as extensions to their current 77 compilers. -- Walt Brainerd Unicomp, Inc. brainerd@unmvax.cs.unm.edu 2002 Quail Run Dr. NE Albuquerque, NM 87122 505/275-0800