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From: link@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 88
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <15821@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 88 21:07:04 GMT
References: <2045@unmvax.unm.edu> <657@convex.UUCP> <660@convex.UUCP> <15776@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <894@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
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Distribution: comp.lang.fortran
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <894@mace.cc.purdue.edu> tsh@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Greg Kamer) writes:
>This strikes a VERY familiar chord! The group I work for consists of
>about 30 researchers who want to solve THEIR problem, don't want to
>take the time to generalize the code and document it properly, and
>yet feel perfectly justified about complaining when something I end
>up having to install for general use doesn't solve the next problem 
>that is encountered.

I have now seen several comments to the effect that scientists can't
program, or are at least sloppy & don't follow modern programming
constructs and software engineering practices.

This is an over-generalization. I can show you
code written by scientists that would teach programmers a thing or
two. On the other hand, I've seen very elegant FORTRAN code written
by a programmer, which very greatly influenced my own programming
style, but which nevertheless was quite wrong.
(The software was for quality control of commercial aircraft
navigation systems. The company did not know that the statistics
calculations were wrong until I had to modify the code. Here's
a perfect example of Kernighan & Plauger's "make it right before
you make it faster". This error could have had potentially
disasterous consequuences).

I think we can each come up with examples and counter-examples of
who can program better, but that adds nothing to the FORTRAN
standards debate.

However, I do resent this kind of condescending attitude towards
scientists who program. Remember, physicists invented the computer
and programming languages. I think we deserve our 2 cents' worth.

Dr. Richard Link
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
link@ssl.berkeley.edu