Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!tank!uwvax!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!texbell!sugar!ssd
From: ssd@sugar.uu.net (Scott Denham)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran 88
Summary: Scientists VS Programmers
Keywords: fortran standards
Message-ID: <2895@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 23 Oct 88 04:04:38 GMT
References: <2045@unmvax.unm.edu> <657@convex.UUCP> <660@convex.UUCP> <15821@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Distribution: comp.lang.fortran
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 38

In article <15821@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, link@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) writes:
> 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.
> 
I certainly didn't say "can't", and certainly didn't mean to imply "all"
To be more exact, many of our "scientists" in fact do NOT produce what 
one might consider "production quality" code. Not that they couldn't...
many of these folks are excellent programmers; the point is that's not
what they are paid to do.  Sometimes a good clean design comes naturally;
other times it may not, particularly if your research leads you down a
somewhat different path than you had expected to take when you started.
Their job is to develop and prove the concepts; ours is to take the 
resulting prototype code and make it part of a robust, generalized 
production system. To do this cost-effectively we MUST all be working
in the same language!  I'd LIKE it to be FORTRAN. 
> 
> 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.
I do too!  I can show you examples of stuff turned out by so-called 
"professional programmers" that would curl your hair! (It does mine
every time I have to maintain it or answer a "how does it work" question_)
> 
> 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.
> 
I hope nothing in my comments triggerd this outburst :) . As I've said
above I've got no problem with scientists who program.  And I'm sure
there are few of us who don't have an ugly hack job or two, thrown 
together to get a task accomplished, that we might not exactly want held
up as a shining example of uour best work! 
> Dr. Richard Link


 Scott Denham 
  Western Atlas International