Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!labrea!rutgers!njin!princeton!udel!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
From: wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?
Summary: vendor extensions are not beneficial
Keywords: FORTRAN
Message-ID: <394@ubbpc.UUCP>
Date: 4 Nov 88 13:41:59 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <16187@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <391@ubbpc.UUCP> <2947@sugar.uu.net>
Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA
Lines: 24

In article <2947@sugar.uu.net>, ssd@sugar.uu.net (Scott Denham) writes:
> In article <75769@sun.uucp>, khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering) writes:
>  ( Extensive discussion of "Why Revise Fortran" deleted)
> > Because lack of a new standard breeds ever more complex vendor extensions.
> [ ... ] *WHY* are there so many vendor extentions?  Surely these folks don't
                                         ^^^^^^^^^^
                                         extensions
> just wake up one morning and decide it would be nice to add say, a new 
> loop construct (DO WHILE ?) to their compiler.

 Remember the Conspiracy Theory of vendor-customer relations [ :-) ]
Vendors do not implement non-standard extensions to their products
to BENEFIT customers, but to trap them into writing
non-portable code, thereby to keep them from converting their programs
to some other vendor's systems.

 If certain companies like Itty Bitty Monopoly did not have non-portable
constructs like that as a barrier to porting AWAY from their systems, how
could they justify such an outrageous high price for their systems?

-- 
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_