Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!bionet!ames!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!hankd
From: hankd@pur-ee.UUCP (Hank Dietz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Teaching Fortran (was Re: Two Fortran Standards)
Summary: Teach it as computing history
Message-ID: <12814@pur-ee.UUCP>
Date: 8 Sep 89 21:23:06 GMT
References: <314@unmvax.unm.edu> <13833@megaron.arizona.edu> <370@unmvax.unm.edu>
Reply-To: hankd@pur-ee.UUCP (Hank Dietz)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Lines: 23

In article <370@unmvax.unm.edu> brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd) writes:
>I hope that engineering and science departments will continue to expose
>students to Fortran; now there will not be the excuse to avoid teaching
>them how to effectively use data structures, recursion, modules, etc.

At Purdue, ee263, our introductory engineering programming class, used to be
Pascal followed by a quick review of Fortran.  It was a tight fit, so the
Fortran was pulled out into a separate 1-credit course one year ago.  That
Fortran course has *NEVER* been offered...  my understanding is that instead
of 500 students, only about 5 wanted it and that wasn't enough.

Would we be more likely to teach 8x?  No.  In fact, we'd be *LESS* likely...
for the same reasons we still stress old C, not ANSI C:  no compilers for the
new stuff, most software is written in the old style, etc.

As an optimizing/parallelizing compiler researcher, I see Fortran as serving
the same function now that Latin served in the middle ages.  Sure, it is old
and awkward, but a lot of things were originally expressed in it; somehow it
seems very wrong to try to "modernize" the language.  For this reason, I
personally prefer teaching Fortran 66 over 77 and 8x (and over IV, WATFOR,
WATFIV, etc.).  Fortran 66 was history -- worth preserving as such.

							-hankd@ecn.purdue.edu