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From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: (pssst...fortran?)
Message-ID: <62688@lanl.gov>
Date: 12 Sep 90 19:21:55 GMT
References: <1990Sep10.193130.20463@rodan.acs.syr.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 40

From article <1990Sep10.193130.20463@rodan.acs.syr.edu>, by isr@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Michael S. Schechter - ISR group account):
> [...]
> I've tried to point this out to him and he can see the
> advantages in C/Pascal for this type of thing, [...]

Why speak of C and Pascal as similar.  In most respects they are on
opposite sides of the spectrum of procedural languages.  Fortran
sits squarely _between_ them.  That is to say, Pascal is _very_
safe (to the point of stifling), Fortran is freer, C is uncontrollable.
Pascal is clear and explicit (and verbose), Fortran is briefer, and
C is merely arcane.  Etc.....

To be sure, ther are _superficial_ similarities between Pascal and
C.  But, there are superficial similarities between _any_two_ procedural
languages you care to mention.  C enthusiasts always try to make Pascal
sound similar to C in order to win the support of former Pascal fanatics
(the fad language that preceded C).  All of the early published reviews
of C always remarked how dissimilar to Pascal it was - it was only claimed
to be similar after it became a successful fad.

> [...]                           My hope is that since he really
> will be able to port over minimal amounts of code from his
> PDP-11, I can get him to use C on the mac. [...]

Why do you want him to switch from a useful language to a lower level
and harder to use one?  C, for most tasks, is either worse than - or
break-even - compared to Fortran.  For the very few things that C does
better than Fortran, Modula 2 or Pascal are _much_ better than C.  Most
of the problems with Fortran are errors of omission - that is, Fortran
lacks features which sooner or later (one hopes) will be added.  On the
other hand, C suffers mostly from errors of commission - that is, C has
features which need to be vastly modified or even eliminated in order to
evolve to a well designed language.  Such changes (which aren't backward
compatible) are almost never even contemplated by language standard
committees.  For this reason, Fortran has a brighter future than C does.

In any case, to claim that Fortran users are ignorant because they don't
switch to C is unfounded arrogance.

J. Giles