Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C argument
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.015620.25417@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Followup-To: comp.lang.misc
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
References: <28621@usc>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 90 01:56:20 GMT

In article <28621@usc> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>Like Cobol and the 8088, there are sound commercial reasons why
>Fortran is important, and why it's going to take a while to fade 
>away.  To paraphrase Einstein, when people who're in Graduate
>school today are in their 40s and 50s, there will be very little
>Fortran in the world.  Because top-notch people in the professional
>world today got their Ph. D.s in the middle ages, they'll
>definitely use Fortran.

     I am in graduate school in a very active research group.  Almost all
of us use Fortran in this department, except for system administration
and X-window programming.  I think that your comments underestimate the
strength of Fortran.  Physicists, chemists and other natural scientists have
different needs and interests than computer scientists.  Fortran suits
many of these needs and will continue to be learned by natural
scientists although I concede that computer scientists can now safely
ignore it.  Fortran has returned to the niche for which it was originally
intended.  Similarly, Cobol is no longer used to write OS's, but will
probably continue to be used in business programming as it provides a
natural interface in this environment.  (I know a lot less about Cobol
than I do about Fortran usage... If Cobol is really dying, as the CS
types are constantly assuring me, then you may ignore the last sentence
of this paragraph.)
     To draw the analogy out further, I think that at some point in the
not too distant future, we'll stop having wars about the usefulness of C
for scientific programming.  C will eventually and inevitably return to
the niche for which it was designed, namely system programming
and compiler construction.  (C is no more an "everything" language
than Fortran or Cobol.  You may have some applications of your own to
add to my little list of things C is good for, but I doubt that many of
you will try to deny that C is better for some things than for others.)
By then of course there will be yet another "vegematic" against which we'll
all try to defend our respective turfs, partly as a knee-jerk reaction, and
partly because Fortran/C/Cobol/whatever works just fine for us and has been
around long enough for us to know that it will outlast the current fad.
     If someone posts a problem to comp.lang.fortran and it turns out
that Fortran is a poor tool for the job, then go ahead and suggest an
alternative.  Trying to debate whether C or Fortran is better without
referring to specific problems is pointless.  The arguments about
whether Fortran or C runs faster are pointless.  (All generalizations of
the latter sort are liable to be shown wrong by specific examples.)
Suggestions to use f2c on perfectly good Fortran code are idiotic unless they
are put forward on better grounds than simply "C is better so let's
convert everything to it".
     Now that I have that off my chest, I am curious.  Among the natural
scientists, what computer languages other than C and Fortran are used?
Is anyone out there using something really esoteric?  What for?

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca

P.S.: I have set the followup to comp.lang.misc.  If you wish to reply
to the Fortran content of this post, you may wish to edit the newsgroups
line.


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