Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Fortran 77 on microcomputers
Message-ID: <45900146@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 2 Sep 88 14:19:00 GMT
References: <141@imspw6.UUCP>
Lines: 16
Nf-ID: #R:imspw6.UUCP:141:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:45900146:000:840
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Sep  2 09:19:00 1988


>The amount of pain and grief saved as compared to trying to
>get any kind of halfway serious system up under DOS will probably
>pay for the Atari several times over.  The Absoft 68000 Fortran has
>been around on 680x0 based super micros since about 1983 and is very
>highly rated.
I have used both the Absoft Fortran (on the Mac) and Microsoft Fortran
on the PC. The results are far superior on the PC. In the first place,
do Atari's have coprocessor chips? Ordinary Mac's don't (can't) and
so Fortran programs run like molasses. (Mac II's excepted.) The
code generation by Absoft is excruciatingly bad. Microsoft's
current product is very good indeed, in fact its optimizer is
very nearly up to that of VAX Fortran (say 80% as good). Every legal
Fortran 77 program I have downloaded from our Vax has run the first time.

DougMcDonald