Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!hao!noao!arizona!lm
From: lm@arizona.edu (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Help us defend against VMS!
Message-ID: <4125@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 88 02:35:27 GMT
References: <1636@tulum.UUCP> <20268@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <4080@megaron.arizona.edu> <717@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: lm@megaron.arizona.edu.UUCP (Larry McVoy)
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson
Lines: 26

In article <717@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <4080@megaron.arizona.edu>, lm@arizona.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:
>> I agree with the rest of the article but this part is not completely
>> true.  VMS fortran is the de facto industry standard.  Until I can have
>> 
>If this is so, it would be interesting to know why Fortran 8X does not
>resemble VMS Fortran.  For example, both let you define record types,
>but the syntax is very different.  IBM's FORTVS doesn't seem to have
>copied much from VMS Fortran either, I've carefully checked a recent
>IBM Fortran manual and couldn't find any of the features that make
>VMS Fortran so sexy.  Apollo's Fortran hasn't any of the VMS extensions
>that I know of.  "de facto industry standard"?  Maybe on Vaxen.

And how many cycles do you think apollos spend chewing on fortran?  Or 
ibm's?

Let me put it this way: consider the type of people that use fortran.
Look at what fortran those people use.  Just because unix has f77
does not make it a fortran oriented machine (also read: f77 is not
the selling point of unix).  To beat a dead horse: would you buy
an apollo to run fortran?  Or a sun for that matter?  Or an ibm?

I think that you should ask fortran hackers what sort of fortran they
want, not Unix/C hackers.
-- 

Larry McVoy	lm@arizona.edu or ...!{uwvax,sun}!arizona.edu!lm