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From: prentice@triton.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Subject: Re: Fortran 90 status
References: <123207.25873@timbuk.cray.com> <1991Apr26.210247.17264@ariel.unm.edu> <3246@travis.csd.harris.com>
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Message-ID: <1991May10.002337.22669@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: Fri, 10 May 91 00:23:37 GMT
Lines: 60

In article <3246@travis.csd.harris.com> bill@hcx2.ssd.csd.harris.com (Bill Leonard) writes:
>
>I've heard these complaints many times, and each time I wonder if people
>really realize what they are asking for.  It seems that programmers
>(of whatever persuasion) want all (or most) of the following:
>
>  1. A modern language with lots of built-in safety (i.e., error checking).
>
>  2. A language that supports the latest whiz-bang design methodology
>     (i.e., data hiding, object-oriented, etc.).
>
>  3. A language that runs like a bat out of hell.
>
>  4. A language that is standard across the entire range of architectures.
>
>  5. A language that takes advantage of the latest hardware and programming
>     technology (i.e., dataflow machines, massively parallel architectures,
>     etc.).
>
>  6. Cheap compilers and tools.
>
>  7. Availability tomorrow (that is, the day after you just bought the
>     latest and greatest whiz-bang computer).
>
>   [stuff deleted]...
>
>let's not expect everything tomorrow.
>

Bill's points are well taken, but I would make two comments.  The first is
that at least so far as my appeal went, I am not asking for all the things
listed above.  Quite the contrary.  I am willing to live with much inconvience
and lack of portability if that is the price I pay for really superior
performance.  I run on supercomputers for only one reason, to run the
largest physics problem I can.  I need a good six orders of magnitude
increase in speed to really do the problems I would like to do in condensed
matter physics.  We will get two or three of those in just the next couple
years with the new CM (if the new machines live up to their billing).  One
might hope 6 is not an eternity away.  But to exploit that speed, I need
languages that address parallelism.  They don't have to be cheap however.
They don't have to be portable.  They don't have to be easy to use (in some
sense).  And they most certainly don't have to be safe.   I would like all 
these things, but the only times the Fortran community has ever had them is 
during periods of relative hardware stagnation.  The rest of the time, this 
is the way it has always been.

My other comment is really more to the point however.  The real issue is that
if we keep going the way we are, Fortran is going to become so obsolete that
it is no longer viable.  15 to 20 years between modernizations of
the language is too long.  I still advocate either frequent updates to the
standard which incorporate existing practice or alternately just giving
up on the whole concept of standards.  I know there are lots of arguments
against both ideas, but I haven't yet heard a suggestion that is any
better.  This much is for sure however, the current system doesn't work.

John
-- 
John K. Prentice    john@unmfys.unm.edu (Internet)
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Computational Physics Group, Amparo Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA