Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <20403@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 4 Mar 88 23:59:14 GMT
References: <2235@bsu-cs.UUCP> <892@cfa.cfa.harvard.EDU>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 26
In-reply-to: ward@cfa.harvard.EDU's message of 4 Mar 88 19:48:55 GMT



From Steve Ward:
>VMS has an excellent Fortran compiler and any serious Fortran number
>cruncher in research will cry its virtues.  Unix only has one Fortran
>compiler{  in the same league with the VMS compiler, and it is the DEC
>Fortran-for-Ultrix compiler.

Serious Fortran number crunchers in research use Vaxes? I think that's
an oxymoron, even DEC's largest machine can't be considered a serious
number cruncher's machine in this day and age, and that was my only
point, VMS locks you into Vaxes and Vaxes can no longer be taken
seriously by people with compute intensive needs. Whatever perceived
niceties there are of programming Fortran under VMS (and I don't
dispute them) are sort of lost when you lack the computational power
to run that code, no? Let's not hash terms, we're talking number
crunching (we both have used that term now), finite element analysis,
matrix inversions etc.

In fact, I think DEC has done an unfortunate disservice, more of a
sociological phenomena, by plying to the scientific community and then
leaving them out in the cold with incompatible fortran and no iron to
grow into and remain competitive with their more nimble colleagues.
Most of us noticed this problem during the huge gap between the 780
and the 8600 releases.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University