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From: jff@denali.ee.uidaho.edu (Jim Frenzel)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Language Use
Keywords: C,Ada,Pascal,C++,Other?
Message-ID: <1991Mar18.162751.10003@groucho>
Date: 18 Mar 91 16:27:51 GMT
References: <1991Mar15.134054.6830@pdn.paradyne.com> <3s3wy4w163w@mimas.UUCP>
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In article <3s3wy4w163w@mimas.UUCP> mcn@mimas.UUCP (Michael C. Neuman) writes:
>   With my experience in the "real world", FORTRAN is nearly a 
>prerequisite to doing anything with engineering. At Los Alamos National 
>Labs, the majority of programmers use FORTRAN for several reasons: ...

While I've never worked at  Los Alamos, I was an engineer with IBM for
7 years and NEVER saw anyone use FORTRAN.  Based on that and interaction
with other engineers, I seriously question that FORTRAN is a 
"prerequisite to doing anything with engineering."  A lot of number
crunching was done during the 70's with FORTRAN; that and the existence
of vectorizing/parallelizing tools are the only reasons it continues to
exist.

>  However, on both systems, FORTRAN is less effecient. A piece of well 
>written C code will outperform the FORTRAN stuff easily. 

This is an excellent reason for abandoning FORTRAN.

>  Thus, my advice: learn them both. If you want to be a programmer, learn 
>C, if you want to be an engineer, learn FORTRAN. If you're not sure, 
>learn both of them. C is hard to learn, FORTRAN just requires knowledge 
>of BASIC.

IMHO, C is no harder than any other language, PROVIDED you start simply
and add material as the student improves.  I wouldn't jump into pointers
and structures the first day of class.

Again, IMHO, the only reason to learn FORTRAN is if you intend to be
an engineer historian. :-)  It is a dead language that anyone can
pick up if ABSOLUTELY necessary.  Why waste class time teaching yesterday's
tools?

-- 

  Jim Frenzel             Electrical Engineering
  University of Idaho     Moscow, ID 83843
  208-885-7888            jfrenzel@groucho.mrc.uidaho.edu