Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!masscomp!andyo
From: andyo@masscomp.ccur.com (Andy Oram)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Education for Fortran 90 (was: Fortran 9X replaced by Ada 9X ?)
Message-ID: <58199@masscomp.ccur.com>
Date: 14 Sep 90 15:42:35 GMT
Reply-To: andyo@masscomp.UUCP (Andy Oram)
Followup-To: comp.lang.fortran
Organization: Concurrent Computer Corporation  - Westford, Ma
Lines: 28
Disclaimer: I don't represent Concurrent; this message represents my own opinion

I would like to suggest that the success of any computer offering depends
partly on the quality of documentation and training available.  This is a
point forgotten by too many engineers.

We can't just wait to see if people want something -- we have to tell them
what it can do for them and BRING THEM to want it.  Perhaps the wrangles over
various language features have made a lot of people ambivalent, and hampered
their ability to promote Fortran 90 even if they consider it an advance
overall.

This isn't the proper newsgroup to carry on a debate about social and
educational issues (respond to me if you want), but I only know of two
large-scale works on Fortran 90, and wonder if anyone is planning any kind of
training effort.  I am a technical writer planning a book myself, and have
found about a dozen people to act as consultants and reviewers.  The two
existing works are:

	Metcalf, Michael, and Reid, John, Fortran 90 Explained, Oxford Science
	Publications, Clarendon Press (division of Oxford University Press),
	1987.  Probably updated since then.

	Brainerd, Walter S., Charles H. Goldberg, and Jeanne C. Adams,
	Programmer's Guide to Fortran 90, Intertext Publications, McGraw-Hill
	Book Company, New York, 1990.

Both are excellently written and conceptually strong textbooks, but I think
there's room for something else that's practical, directed toward a scientist
or engineer who is very goal-directed and wants to focus on the application.