Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!jethro!exodus!appserv!sun!amdcad!dgcad!dg-rtp!spam!cochran
From: cochran@spam.rtp.dg.com (Dave Cochran)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran - our favorite language
Message-ID: <1991Mar28.223726.18503@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Date: 28 Mar 91 22:37:26 GMT
References: <1991Mar20.195732.15376@appmag.com> <2218@cluster.cs.su.oz.au> <16149@chaph.usc.edu>
Sender: usenet@dg-rtp.dg.com (Usenet Administration)
Reply-To: cochran@spam.rtp.dg.com (Dave Cochran)
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Lines: 34

In article <16149@chaph.usc.edu>, echeverr@sal-sun8.usc.edu (The Black Sheep) writes:
|> Excuse me, but is it just me, or is fortran a language so old it is becoming
|> obsolescent?	Really, i just can't handle doing programs while tripping over
|> small details and phantom errors from nowhere and tricky compilations and
|> core dump after core dump after execution...
|> 
|> 	Please, answer me, enlighten me on my feelings toward f77...
|> 
|> 		... cuz i still think it s*cks!! :-p
|> 

Wishful thinking, huh? :-)

Well, find a language that doesn't have "small details" for the uninitiated
to trip over, and at the same time produces code that'll add 1 and 1 together in
less than a week, and the entire computer industry will be revolutionized.

Really, it all depends on what you want to do when you grow up.  If you want to
go to work for a computer manufacturer, then forget the FORTRAN and concentrate
on C.  If you want to go to work in any other scientific field on earth, then
you better tough it out.   It's old, but because of that there are millions of
lines of code extant and tens of thousands of compilers installed at user sites,
so you'll probably end up using one.

I took calculus, which is a lot older than FORTRAN, and I thought THAT sucked,
but that doesn't mean that it's obsolete.

-- 
+------------------------------------------------------+
|Dave Cochran (cochran@spam.rtp.dg.com)                |
|Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC  |
+------------------------------------------------------+
|"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.       |
| Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx|
+------------------------------------------------------+