Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!nrl-cmf!ames!eos!eugene From: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: How to supplant FORTRAN Message-ID: <2115@eos.UUCP> Date: 12 Dec 88 22:46:16 GMT References: <406@ubbpc.UUCP> <3688@hubcap.UUCP> <416@ubbpc.UUCP> <37846@XAIT.Xerox.COM> Reply-To: eugene@eos.UUCP (Eugene Miya) Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif. Lines: 53 > S. Ryan asks Are there concrete proposals? Sure FORTRAN 8X. 8) Let's see, when I was in High School I heard about Fortran II, in college I learned Fortran IV (WATFOR AND WATFIV), I took a workstudy job and learned about Levels G and H (OPT=2), I forgot what SCOPE had, Univac had Fortran V and Data General have VII and we all know VII > V > IV right? Do you think DEC or Cray or any of the other vendors (American European or Japanese) are any better? So, what's Fortran? Do you believe in portability? (You must also believe in the reply key on your mail system.) I think we should scrap the language (COBOL, too). I think all compiler development of the language should stop. Sure all science as we know it now would stop. Even Backus doesn't write FORTRAN. Now you can freeze existing compilers, that's okay. Just no fixes. Now a few people (those who promote the conversion of dusty decks into perfectly parallel code) would scream, as would the users. The computer community should force the rest of the world to reevaluate their codes and if they really need them, convert them. Bell Labs and universities effectively did this with Unix. I think this will benefit science as well as keep people employed. A few token efforts will try to rewrite Fortran compilers, but all the best compiler writers will be working to improve C, right? This would also give other languages a chance to try their hand. Don't think at evolution is necessary a gradual transition [Gould]. Those people and projects willing to make the transition to radically new languages on architectures which perform significantly better will cause colleagues to change because they won't want to be left in the dust. That's why people went to computers in the first place. I think its more important to replace BASIC (used to teach physics majors at Caltech [noted in an issue of Engineering and Science over a year ago]. You see language design is the result of the tension between expressiveness and flexibility. If you want help on a computer, some keyboards actually have a "HELP" key, a single powerful key, whereas others require 4 separate stokes ('H''E''L''P' on the QWERTY keyboard). This has never been standardized. This is why I don't like Programmed Function keys Do you hit "Backspace" or "Delete?" (another relgious argument). Do you think the PF keys are standard? Anyways, it will never happen. You can start breathing again. Another gross generalization from --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov resident cynic at the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: "Mailers?! HA!", "If my mail does not reach you, please accept my apology." {uunet,hplabs,ncar,decwrl,allegra,tektronix}!ames!aurora!eugene "Send mail, avoid follow-ups. If enough, I'll summarize."