Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!jerry
From: jerry@violet.berkeley.edu ( Jerry Berkman )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran vs C for numerical computation
Message-ID: <14363@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 16 Sep 88 21:48:39 GMT
References: <822@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <822@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu> chris@spock (Chris Ott) writes:
>
>In fact, the reason that
>most people in this newsgroup who assert the superiority of Fortran are
>probably doing so because they are used it. They don't want to take the
>necessary time to _really_ learn C.
>
>It was hard at first, but I
>was determined to learn C, no matter what.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Chris Ott

I admit it, I'm lazy.  I have been maintaining programs written in C for
at least 5 years.  If I have any choice, I'd rather use FORTRAN.  I'm
currently rewriting a large C program in FORTRAN, and it is a relief
to concentrate on the problem being solved rather than chasing through
include files trying to find out what a declaration means, or trying to
remember bizarre rules to figure out what a statement actually does.

And I don't believe C is really "terse".  Some statements are, e.g. "i++"
is terser than the FORTRAN equivalent.  But what about exponentiation,
e.g. C's "pow(x,(double)i);" vs. FORTRAN's "x**i".  And what about I/O:
e.g., what is the terse C equivalent to "print *, x" especially if "x"
is an array.  I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.
I prefer FORTRAN and nothing you post will change my mind.

I once shared an office with someone who used APL; he couldn't understand
why anyone would use any other language for any program.  Ditto, one of
my managers thought lisp was the answer to ours prayers.  And then there
was the manager who said use PL/1.  Now the C proponents.

Just for the record, since some people posting to this group seem to
feel dynamic memory allocation from FORTRAN is impossible, I have used
dynamic memory allocation from FORTRAN on CDC, IBM, VAX UNIX, and VAX VMS
systems.  It is not in the FORTRAN standard, but is fairly common practice
for large programs.

Also for the record, one posting claimed UNIX f77 doesn't have the include
statement:  it does, at least in BSD UNIX.

	- Jerry Berkman
	  Computing Services, U.C. Berkeley
	  jerry@violet.berkeley.edu