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From: ndeng@EULER.BERKELEY.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: What is FORTRAN for?
Message-ID: <9007312124.AA14917@euler.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 31 Jul 90 21:24:06 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 22


O.K, here is my 2 cents worth:

I wrote a program of about 5K lines on a PC, mainly for matrix manipulation,
eigenvalue problems, tensor analysis, etc. After I debugged on the PC and
confident for some small scale problems, I ported the program on a bunch of 
big machines, a VAX 8800, an IBM 3090, and a Cray X-MP and run for BIG 
problems (if you know FEM, you will understand what 100,000 degree of freedom
mean --- A set of simultaneous equations of 100,000 variables).

I wrote the program in FORTRAN. I didn't have to change a SINGLE line to let
the program run from PC through Cray. I wonder if any other languages can
enjoy such a portability.

Of course, when I need to program for interactive graphics, etc., I go back to
C or Pascal, but for the CORE of the computations, I use FORTRAN.

I once heard people said that there are only 20% of code in a program are 
really useful in computation and they need 80% of effort. Other 80% of code
are really only for human interface (I/O, memory, graphics, etc.) or "cosmetic"
and they may need only 20% of effort. IMHO, FORTRAN is the language for the
20% of code.