Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!convex!mozart!psmith From: psmith@mozart.uucp (Presley Smith) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: FORTRAN 88 Summary: User Input Message-ID: <673@convex.UUCP> Date: 25 Oct 88 11:54:51 GMT References: <669@convex.UUCP> <5826@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Sender: news@convex.UUCP Reply-To: psmith@convex.com (Presley Smith) Distribution: comp.lang.fortran Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx. Lines: 129 In article <5826@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> lamson@sierra.uucp (scott h lamson) writes: > > >> psmith@mozart.uucp (Presley Smith) writes >> Vendors have a way of providing information to their users and collecting >> information from their users. >> I believe that the vendors are in touch with the users and that they >> listen to their user groups. >> We also >> attempt to represent the view of that group to X3J3 in the way we vote. > >Help me here. I work at General Electric Corporate Research and >Development. Probably not one of your smaller companies. We have 300 >Sun's, 3 dozen or so VAX's, an IBM 3081K, and a Convex 210 (220 >soon...). No vendor has come here to talk about Fortran 8x ever >that I have been told about. In order to have an informed opinion, >I subscribe to the ACM Fortran Forum, >ordered the draft of F8x, 6 copies of Fortran 8X Explained, and have >asked about F8x at most vendor presentations. But the vendors have >not made an effort to publicize the proposed standard here one way or >the other. As for the user groups (DECUS, SHARE, CUG, or others), at >least at our site, the people who might go to them are the systems >managers, not people who (work for a living.. :) ) use fortran in >their work. I will respecfully listen to compiler writers from >vendors tell me how difficult the proposed F8x is to implement, that >is their area of expertise, I do physics. But I reject the claim that >any vendor has the right to say their opinions represent the views of >their customers. Certainly that is not the case here, as no vendor >has asked anyone I know about F8x. Each of the companies that you mentioned has a user group. I know that the DECUS group, the CONVEX group, and both of the IBM groups have been involved in providing information on Fortran 8x. Part of the problem that you experienced was that in the U.S., the vendors were not allowed to make copies of the standard and provide that to users directly. You had to order copies of the proposed standard from Global Engineering and pay for those copies. This is due to an arrangement between a part of the ANSI organization and Global. The reason is that there was so much demand for copies of draft standards that it was taking more and more of their resources to copy and mail drafts. They off loaded this effort to Global. Global is a "for profit" corporation. They make their money from selling draft standards. If ANSI allowed each group to copy and distribute those standards, then Global would not make the money they are due under this arrangement. Many members of X3J3 are not happy with this arrangement, but that is the arrangement at the current time. Most users group meetings are not designed for just system managers. But, the vendors and the user groups do NOT have control of who comes to those meetings or control of what information gets passed around in the company when the attendees return. If you know of someone that is in your company and attending a user group meeting, you should talk with that person and get your input to them and should ask for copies of what is distributed at the user group. Obviously not everyone who is interested can go to every user group meeting. Some of the effort that I know about are: 1. DECUS - had a session last year and again a couple of weeks ago on FORTRAN 8x. There are lots of sessions at a DECUS meeting and one must choose to go that session as opposed to another session. We had people that attended both of those sessions and brought back copies of their presentations and resolutions. That information is passed around inside the company to those who have expressed an interest in seeing it. 2. IBM - I don't know about the IBM user groups, but I do know that IBM sent a packet of information to several thousand sites on the FORTRAN 8x issues. Again, IBM does not have the name and address of each user and so that packet was sent to some central person at each site. I suspect that information was not distributed in many cases... 3. CONVEX - Discussed the proposed standard at their 1987 User Group in October, 1987 and again in October, 1988. We provided handouts, etc. for those who attended the session. At the October, 1988 meeting that session was one of the best attended of any session at the meeting. My point in all this is that various vendors and user groups have attempted to provide the public with information on the proposed standard and have encouraged users to discuss the issues with them. Did I talk to everyone that attended our user group about this issue, NO. But, I did discuss it with anyone that was interested enough in the issue to want to talk. I also collected cards from various users that requested more information and provide additional documentation to them on the subject. It's like the current politial debate that is going on. I cannot say that I am representing all the users that we have because there is a diverse set of views amoung our users. I can say that I've talked to numerous users of our equipment and believe that I have a good sense of what those users have told me about their position on the proposed standard. This, unfortunately, is NOT a black and white issue. Also, there is no way that any vendor can discuss this with every user of their equipment. The bottom line is that many of the vendors have attempted to find out what their user base thinks and have tried to provide ways for that user base to provide input. It's certainly not a perfect system. I take some exception to the argument that the vendors are ignoring the input from their users or that the some other group knows better than the vendors what "users" want. The vendors are listening. It's up to the users to make their views known. > >On the difficulty of implementing the proposed F8x, I feel that I must >take the word of the experts that it will be difficult. I just think >that it will be worth the cost. For each person-year that goes into >writing a compiler, how many person-years go into people developing >applications using that compiler? Could it be less than an order of >magnitude? As for the speed of the compiler, my own opinion is this >is a non-issue. The last time I worried about that was on a RAYTHEON >703, and even then the paper tape reader was slower. I spend a lot >more time reading code than compiling it. That makes many of the >features in modules and module procedures so very important; to get >understandable readable code for complex applications. You can only >worry about efficiency after you have the right answer. Complaints about the speed of the compilers many times come from users that are on larger, faster machines. I've heard Cray users complain about the speed of the CFT77 compiler relative to the older CFT compiler... We receive requests continually for faster compilers. In fact, since 1986, we have nearly doubled the speed of our compilers. And, we still have users that want it to be faster...and we are still working on making it faster. That's direct input from our users. I think that people get used to a particular compilation speed and when it's slower than expected, they notice quickly.