Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sun!chiba!khb
From: khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 88
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <74170@sun.uucp>
Date: 23 Oct 88 18:22:21 GMT
References: <2060@unmvax.unm.edu> <15851@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
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In article <15851@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> link@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) writes:
>
>As far as my own postings are concerned, I did not mean to impune the
>legitimate and important contributions of Ph.D. computer scientists
>to language theory. What I object to is turning FORTRAN from a number
>cruncher (FORmula TRANslator), it's original scope, into an all-purpose
>language with lots of bells and whistles, simply because some Ph.D.
>computer scientists *evidently* feel that this should be so. The new
>standard does not serve my needs.

Are you complaining that f88 leaves something out ? If your complaint
is that it contains features that YOU do not deem useful, it is not
logical to conclude that other users do not. These other users, in
fact, lobbied hard to get them in and to keep them in. 

MY background in in mathematics and Kalman filtering (I was involved
with co-authoring and porting the resulting code), and there are very
few features in f88 that I would not have found very useful. There
are, in fact, features MISSING. But I strongly support acceptance of
the current draft NOW. It represents a strong step forward.

It should not be forgotten that the last couple of years of committee
meetings involved attempt after attempt to remove features; the vast
majority of these attempts failed, because these "bells and whistles"
are considered vital by many. 

>
>I feel that I should speak up, since numerical analysis and modeling
>in FORTRAN is what I do for a living. I *do* want an improved FORTRAN,
>but I want the "improvements" to be truly useful, without overloading
>the language with constructs *deemed*, but not proven, useful by the
>aforementioned Ph.D. computer scientists.

Not all numerical analysts agree with you that the language is
overlaaded with uneeded features. If you would itemize the features
you think unecessary, supporters of the standard can produce ideas on
how they can be employed to good effect.
>
>As far as I can tell, the needs of the end-users (such as myself) were
>not given much consideration in drafting the proposed standard.
>(This is a subjective opinion only, please spare me the flames).
>
Would you please present your evidence ? Until fairly reccently I too
was an end-user (and an offical observer, so I got all the meeting
minutes). My needs WERE represented. 

>>    That does not mean that the good ideas from these more recent languages
>>    should not be borrowed.
>
>I agree with this, but only so far as it improves FORTRAN without changing
>its scope. I don't want a lot of garbage simply because Pascal or C has it!

I think everyone agrees with this. But those features which have
proved useful belong in FORTRAN. Please define FORTRAN's scope. I have
always thought that FORTRAN was THE language for scientific
programming (APL notwithstanding). Seems to me that there are a lot of
different scientists, with different needs. But it would not make too
much sense to have specialized languages for each (who wants to
translate IMSL and NAG into dozens of dialects ? Not me!)

>If you want another Ada, it's already been invented.

Meaning ? F88 is too much like Ada. If so, how ?
>
>

I propose that opponents of the standard give specifics. Propoents can
then respond in a reasoned way. Nothing is gained by pointing out that
certain vendors are out to gut the standard, calling members of the
committee ComputerScientists, or claims that physicsts make poor
programmers. 


Keith H. Bierman
It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus