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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work
Message-ID: <26256:Dec404:30:1390@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 90 04:30:13 GMT
References: <1980@mts.ucs.UAlberta.CA> <18016@hydra.gatech.EDU> <16671@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: IR
Lines: 21

In article <16671@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser) writes:
> Would someone care to enlighten me as to why he or she thinks that C has
> a difficult syntax and is difficult to learn? I just didn't have this
> experience, and I came to C after having learned Fortran, Assembler
> (MIX, on paper, and then the assembler for an obscure Japanese laboratory
> mini) and BASIC.

I agree. I started by reading about Fortran II and IV and mainframe
BASIC. Finally I had the actual experience of writing out some code
(mainframe BASIC again) and giving it to someone to see results a week
later. Then it was up through various assembler languages, MIX, Pascal,
a fortunately brief stint with tiddlywink microcomputer languages, and
now C. Somewhere along the line I picked up Forth, and had a lot more
trouble with it at first than I ever had with C.

It just isn't that hard a language to use, folks. Are you a Fortran
prorgammer who wants to learn C the easy way? Promise yourself to spend
five minutes a day putting your Fortran code through f2c and reading the
results until you understand them. Past that you're home free.

---Dan


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