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From: tom@itc.univie.ac.at (Tom Kovar)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Our favorite language
Message-ID: <1991Apr08.123921.11354@nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at>
Date: 8 Apr 91 12:39:21 GMT
References: <27fc5084@ThreeL.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@nestroy.wu-wien.ac.at (The Usenet User)
Organization: Inst. of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Vienna
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Since some days I have been following this discussion and I must say I am more
and more delighted...
I am an experienced both fortran and C programmer and have heard many dis-
cussions and arguments against fortran - the most interesting thing has always
been, that especially those people are sharp against fortran, who had never
written a programme in fortran, many of them being wonderfull high computer
science theoretitians, who had never written a reasonable running programme
at all - in any language.
I claim that for many tasks in the field of numerical mathematics and number
crunching fortran is a good language, not to speak about practical reasons;
in many cases only fortran coding results in the best optimized and fastest
programme. Ever seen a Cray, big CDC or IBM? Probably not...

In article <27fc5084@ThreeL.co.uk> jf@threel.co.uk (John Fisher) writes:
>Lots of people use the language without having the problems you mention.
>You might find it profitable to compare this fact with your own experience.
>If you call yourself a programmer, you should consider it a matter of
>professional pride to be able to master *any* language without too much
>difficulty.  If you can't, perhaps you should consider whether you should
>find another field of endeavour.
>
>In more general terms, I can't see the point of postings like this.  I
>don't read this newsgroup because I *like* Fortran, but because Fortran is
>an important aspect of my work, and I need the news and the help.  People
>who work in university environments may be suprised to hear that it is not
>the case that everyone can chose the language they work with; to many
>people it is a given.
>
>To me it seems out of order to bust into a newsgroup and simply say, "You
>guys are wasting your time", without giving any substantive reasons and
>disregarding everybody else's agendas.
>

 ... I fully agree with John Fisher in all these points - except for one.
I *am* stil working in a university environment, and anyhow, there are also
many situations here where it is given to you which programming language
to use.
There are millions of code lines written in highly optimized Fortran 
programmes; and if you need some hours of CPU on a Cray for one single small
run, you'll probably not risk rewriting them into a language popular with
CS-theoretitians and thus cause them need twice as much CPU time... You'll
rather continue developing them in fortran, utilizing the best optimized
fortran compilers...
 And if you have a task for which C or pascal or modula or devil knows what
is better, you'll use it; as a programmer, you are supposed to be flexible
and capable of adapt yourself to the needs of your a) programme b)operating
system c)HW. Or not?

  I think, that "Real programmes are no quiche eaters..."
								Tom
PS: last but not least, now a little more philosophically: if I do not like
a thing, it is by far no proof for the thing to be bad. In most cases, it is
*my* fault that I do not like it...