Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lanl!unm-la!unmvax!brainerd
From: brainerd@unmvax.unm.edu (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Fortran 88
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <2060@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 88 18:51:13 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico at Albuquerque
Lines: 60


The purpose of an ANSI technical committee such as X3J3 is to discuss
and resolve technical issues.  Some of you reading this column must be
sensing how frustrating it is to conduct a rational technical argument
with people like the folks from Convex, who say that

a)  the proposed Fortran 88 is no good because Ken Kennedy, a Ph. D.
    computer scientist, says it isn't.

b)  the proposed Fortran 88 is no good because some Ph. D. computer scientists
    had a hand in developing it.

Well, if you're not too logical, then maybe you should be politically astute;
one of the officers of X3J3 is the Editor, but it is not Walt Brainerd
(as P Smith, a member of X3J3, seems to think) and never has been!

Some other basic facts of recent postings need to be corrected:

1.  My first language (other than an assembler) was Fortran,
    first learned in 1960, before Pascal and C were invented, I believe.
    That does not mean that the good ideas from these more recent languages
    should not be borrowed.

2.  The document discussed by ISO/WG5 was the work of X3J3 over the last
    ten years.  The "five" mentioned only served as a group to modify
    the draft standard to simplify it as requested by many commenters.
    For example, ALIAS, IDENTIFY, RANGE, internal procedures, and
    host association were removed.

Some differences of opinion:

1.  I think "computer scientists" with vast experience with Fortran and
    scientific computing, even if they ARE educated, are at least as
    qualified to design Fortran as compiler writers.  Acutally, I was also
    hoping that my compilers would be written by people knowledgable in the
    field of computer science.  The issue of proper representation reminds
    me of the U.S. senator that, when accused of being quite mediocre, said
    that mediocre people need representation.  Users need all of the
    representation they can get and some of that representation
    should be through people who understand language design issues.
    Some of it, inevitably, will be mediocre.

2.  Hey, folks, we're approaching the 1990s.  Technology is getting more
    complicated, and so are compilers (along with the technology available
    to write them), but anyone who thinks Fortran 88 is as complicated as
    Ada has been ingesting brain-damaging substances.

I appreciate Bob Allison's sentiment to try to downplay polarization
of vendors and users.  Of course there are exceptions on both sides,
but I stick by my statement (with which P Smith of Convex agrees) that
the hard objections come from some vendors (and the hard push for it
is coming from some of those representing users).  It didn't used to be this way
when most members contributed toward making the proposed standard the best
they could, whatever their technical positions were.

The above ARE the opinion of my employer (which is NOT the University
of New Mexico, by the way), as well as myself.

Walt Brainerd 505/275-0800
Unicomp, Inc.  Albuquerque, NM