Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tank!ncar!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!riley
From: riley@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 88
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <6656@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 22 Oct 88 17:00:36 GMT
References: <2045@unmvax.unm.edu> <657@convex.UUCP> <660@convex.UUCP> <15776@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <894@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <15821@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: riley@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Daniel S. Riley)
Distribution: comp.lang.fortran
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 30

In article <15821@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> link@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) writes:
>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.
[lengthy indignant rebuttal deleted]

The point is that writing good code is not part of the job description
for most scientists.  Usually, we're more interested in writing something
that does the job at hand, not writing some wonderfully generalized all
purpose solutions.  Turning this sort of code into general purpose,
re-usable modules can be very difficult, and the limitations of the fortran
language make it a lot harder.  Scientists can write very good code, but
most of them, most of the time, don't.  It's just not our primary concern.
As a practicing physicist at a high-energy research lab, I've re-written
a lot of very bad code, and I've wished many times over for a lot of the
features in the F8X proposals.  The situation is better since we've
implemented source control in the lab, and started using SASD and similar
techniques, but I still wish for a better Fortran.  (and before anyone
says it, switching to another language is not an option.)

-Dan Riley (dsr@lns61.tn.cornell.edu, dsr@crnlns.bitnet)
-Wilson Lab, Cornell U.