Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: FORTRAN horrors
Message-ID: <847@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Date: 2 Apr 88 08:53:58 GMT
References: <584@auvax.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 29
Keywords: FORTRAN, c, Pl/1

In article <584@auvax.UUCP>, willis@auvax.UUCP (Tony Willis) writes:
> I think you people who were debating the relative merits of FORTRAN vs C
> should go off and learn PL/1! Let's face facts: PL/1 offers pretty well
> all the features of C (bit manipulations, dynamic memory allocation,
> string handling, pointers, etc) that C lovers
> would claim FORTRAN lacks; on the other hand PL/1 offers
> all the features of FORTRAN (complex arithmetic, wide range of math
> functions) that FORTRAN lovers would claim C lacks.

> Soo, how come PL/1 never became more popular (at least in North
> America - it did become fairly popular in Europe where it was designed).

Oddly enough, I've only ever used PL/I on a Burroughs B6700, a PR1ME 400,
and an IBM 4331, all of which were made in the USA.  (I thought PL/I was
derived from the "New Programming Language" designed by SHARE?)

Which of the elementary transcendental functions present in Fortran is
missing in C?  C has everything described in Cody&Waite, and I thought
they described everything required in Fortran.

Fortran *does* have string handling (like PL/I's CHAR, rather than CHAR VAR).

There is an extremely good reason for using C rather than PL/I,
and it is the same reason that someone would use F77 rather than F8X:
it is important for a programmer to be able to master his tools, and
PL/I is extremely hard to understand.  (Need I mention the 22/7 bug?)
{It is very easy to _think_ you understand PL/I, but when you consider
tasking, the 'abnormal' attribute, label parameters, ONSOURCE, ...}
F77 has one extremely great virtue which almost compensates for its
defects:  ordinary mortals can master the whole language.