Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!labrea!Portia!dilvish
From: dilvish@Portia.Stanford.EDU (Jay Shrauner)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Comments on NeXT.
Summary: Antiquated languages
Message-ID: <3810@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 1 Oct 88 19:52:07 GMT
References: <9291@swan.ulowell.edu> <5022@juniper.uucp> <3520@phri.UUCP>
Reply-To: dilvish@Portia.stanford.edu (Jay Shrauner)
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 20

In article <3520@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>	God, I just know I'm going to get flamed for this (and I can hardly
>believe that I'm saying it myself) but unless the NeXT has a good Fortran
>package (i.e. production quality compiler, symbolic debugger of dbxtool or
>better quality, and complete math function library) it's just not
>interesting to us except as a cute toy.

I hardly think it wise to chain the newest technology to antiquated languages.
Many people know Fortran but it would be about the dead last thing I would
consider in buying a computer.  In my humble opinion it is a pretty sad
language and only so prevalent still because it's the only language many
people bothered to learn.  Other languages are much more powerful and also
much more widely used and taught in the EDUCATIONAL community, which is
supposedly what the NeXT computer is aimed at market-wise.  I'd just as soon
not have to pay for the addition of a 'good Fortran package' in the basic
computer package as I would hopefully never use it.

Jay Shrauner
jas@dadent.wustl.edu