Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pilchuck!ssc!happym!polari!microsoft!bobal
From: bobal@microsoft.UUCP (Bob Allison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Should I convert FORTRAN code to C?
Summary: Thanks for the kind words, FORTRAN is faster than C
Message-ID: <1518@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jun 88 16:04:08 GMT
References: <22ad4e5b!4683@snark.UUCP> <5241@ecsvax.UUCP> <2960@emory.uucp>
Reply-To: bobal@microsoft or {uunet,sun}!microsoft!bobal (Bob Allison)
Organization: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
Lines: 54

>In article <2960@emory.uucp> platt@emory.UUCP (Dan Platt) writes:
>>In article <5241@ecsvax.UUCP> cjl@ecsvax.UUCP (Charles Lord) writes:
>>
>>[responding to gripe, says nice stuff about MS Fortran]
>
>Actually, I've been quite impressed with the MS Fortran 4.10. It has a few bugs
>(I found one -- there are probably more), but I'm more tolerant of these than
>some people are (judging by the flames that  some people have generated and
>pointed at microsoft).  The products MS Fortran and MS C are very similar in
>quality, speed of compilation and speed of executable code.  The code is 
>quite fast for MS Fortran (it beat out MSC and Turbo C for some numerical
>procedures that I benchmarked),  and all of these were much faster than
>the previous generation of products available for PC/s. 
>
>But not to stray too far from the course...
>	[a good description of criteria for selection of FORTRAN deleted]
>
>I believe there's room for both languages, and use both.  The rest depends
>on the above criterea.
>
>Dan Platt

Well, this isn't exactly an ad either, but I am the Lead for MS FORTRAN now.
I have three basic comments:

1)  It's nice to hear good things every now and then (let's not fill the
    net with endorsements or flames: I just wanted to say I appreciate it).

2)  (This isn't directed at you, Don)
    I've been reading the net for at least two years and I hear a
    lot of people who find bugs in products.  As a developer, nothing is
    more frustrating than hearing vague rumors of bugs, but never getting
    any solid evidence of such.  Please, please, pretty please, take the
    effort to slog your way through whatever customer service is available
    for whatever product and try to report the bug.  You're probably 
    helping someone else, maybe helping yourself, and you give us job 
    security (developers are often the worst about this).

3)  MS FORTRAN and MS C use the same back end.  This means that there are
    very few optimizations which one compiler performs that the other does
    not (none that I know of).  Yet, Don says that FORTRAN sometimes ran 
    faster than C.  I've worked at other companies with similar compiler 
    technology and I have found this to be the case for many benchmarks.  
    We all know why, too.  FORTRAN has a lot of problems, but it has a 
    couple of advantages which are what has kept it around for so long 
    and this is clearly one of them.

PS: About porting FORTRAN code to C: one of the most obnoxious features
    of the port is that all REAL arguments become DOUBLE PRECISION (C 
    always passes double).  It doesn't hurt the answer, it just slows 
    things down a WHOLE BUNCH on a lot of machines.

Bob Allison
(I got a bunch of positive response about X3J3 stuff, so I'll keep it up)