Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!yale!cmcl2!beta!a!jlg
From: jlg@a.UUCP (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: FORTRAN Horror
Message-ID: <537@a.UUCP>
Date: 25 Mar 88 03:15:55 GMT
References: <24861@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <1135@pembina.UUCP> <2596@pdn.UUCP> <17739@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 19
Summary: Agreed

In article <17739@watmath.waterloo.edu>, rwwetmore@watmath.waterloo.edu (Ross Wetmore) writes:


>   I think this is an area where the classic symptoms of moral superiority
> abound. Computer science has progressed beyond the capabilities of Fortran
> and now views it with disdain as neanderthal. Scientists whose interest is
> not in computers themselves, but in the results they produce, are quite
> content to employ known and trusted tools if they do the job, and find it
> extremely frustrating when these tools are taken away and if at all replaced,
> then replaced with buggy new tools that are totally untrustworthy.

Bravo!  Not only that, the languages that computer scientists claim are
so much more advanced often are not nearly as good as Fortran for the task
of ordinary number-crunching.  There is no a-priori reason that a language
that was designed for compiler or operating system implementation should 
do scientific code as well as Fortran does.  And, in fact, none do.

J. Giles
Los Alamos