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From: john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Learning other languages (Was: Fortran vs. C for numerical work)
Message-ID: <1990Dec7.213054.4488@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 90 21:30:54 GMT
Sender: John K. Prentice
Organization: Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 20

You know, the title of this subject "learning other languages" is
interesting.  The unspoken assumption is that all defenders of Fortran
are people who only know Fortran and who are resisting learning anything
new.  But the issue is not learning new languages at all, it is finding
the one that makes you most productive.  I know an awful lot of scientific
programmers who graduated from college during the last 10 years who only
learned Pascal in the university because it was the fad language of the time
(now it is C).  But I don't know any of them that continued to program in
it regularly once they started working on real scientific applications (Pascal
was fine when all you did was program small quadrature routines at school, you
can put up with any language for small applications.  Big ones or very
complicated, or anything with complex arithmetic, are a whole other ball game).
They all learned Fortran because it was easier for them to accomplish what
they were trying to do.  So, for them the "other" language was Fortran, not
C!  I just want to remind people that people also make conscious decisions
about their choice of Fortran occassionally, it is not just a question of
them being resistant to change or just plain ignorant.

John K. Prentice
Amparo Corporation