Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!udel!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
From: wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?
Keywords: FORTRAN PL/I kludge
Message-ID: <388@ubbpc.UUCP>
Date: 28 Oct 88 13:00:15 GMT
Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA
Lines: 20


 I haven't programmed seriously in FORTRAN for a decade or so, so maybe some
FORTRAN advocates can tell me something: why is there an effort to make up
a new standard at all?
 It seems to me that if folks keep kludging up FORTRAN to make it more
"modern", they arrive at a baroque mess that serves nobody well.
 Modern FORTRAN has been tried before: it was called PL/I and it flopped
miserably.
 Wouldn't the numerical computation community be better advised to find or
develop a modern language, e.g. something like Modula-2 or occam or whatever
(insert your favorite BNF here), possibly with the addition of some stuff
to facilitate numerical work, then to put the effort into writing good
FORTRAN-to-UTOPIA-99 translators.
 I just don't see that making more complex, kludgy FORTRANoid languages is
a good use of time and money.
-- 
Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant	rutgers!cbmvax!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
Unisys UNIX Portation Center	"What one fool can do, another can!"
P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121		Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by
Blue Bell, PA 19424		Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_