Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!caen.engin.umich.edu!falken
From: falken@caen.engin.umich.edu (David R  Falkenburg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Lightspeed Fortran ???????
Summary: A decent fortarn on the environment would be nice
Message-ID: <3fbe0741.1285f@maize.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 88 16:40:00 GMT
References: <3964@charon.unm.edu> <607@husc6.harvard.edu>
Organization: U of M Engineering, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Lines: 32

> In article <3964@charon.unm.edu> cn7gr8ag@ariel.unm.edu.UUCP (Bill Rider) writes:
> >
> >Considering the expansion of the Mac into the engineering world in ever
> >growing numbers, a Lightspeed Fortran might be just the ticket to help
> >reduce the development cycle for Fortran programs and make our lives 
> >easier and programming more enjoyable.
> >

FORTRAN, like ot or not, is still used by ALOT of people in the
engineering community.  Not having a decent FORTRAN development system
(sufficiently MacIsh)  really hurts the Mac in terms of it's use in
scientific computing here at U of M.   People USE IBM-PC-XTs to write
software in FORTRAN even though they use Macs for almost all other
microcomputing applications.

The interfaces to compiler's such as Absofts (and hence Microsoft's) FORTRAN
are old, and non-intuitive.  Newer compiler's requiring MPW are nice but
still require MPW to run (not a selling opint for some people).  While the
compiler's themselves seem to be ok once you've got the source code into
them, the user interface leaves much to be desired.

What people are looking for is a sufficiently Mac-Ish development environment.
Companies like Absoft and others could take their compilers as they currently
stand and add integrated editors / linkers alot of people here would probably
switch from IBM-PC to Macintosh II as a standard engineerin microcomputer.

Apple's been trying to tout the Mac II (and Mac IIx) as a engineering
workstation, but until some better quality software appearsfor the machine (i.e a nice ftn compiler):q!

-- 
Dave Falkenburg @ University of Michigan Computer Aided Engineering Network
ARPA: falken@caen.engin.umich.edu    UUCP: umix!caen.engin.umich.edu!falken