Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!oliveb!sun!fatcity!khb From: khb@fatcity.Sun.COM (fatcity) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: so much for X3J3 Keywords: WG5, standard, wasted everybody's time Message-ID: <98041@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 7 Apr 89 20:40:05 GMT References: <24032@beta.lanl.gov> <97753@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <24066@beta.lanl.gov> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (fatcity) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 97 In article <24066@beta.lanl.gov> dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) writes: ..... >Then perhaps if the committee had concentrated on improving Fortran >instead of molding it in the image of a CS language product none of the >travail would have been necessary. I suggest you study the last 10 years of meeting notes. It is not a CS language product. It is the result of many "real world engineers and scientsts" crafting a tool to solve their problems. CS types hate the product. > >> Furthermore the public comment has NOT been ignored. Every letter was >> read. Every proposal no matter how ill-informed was dealt with by the >> appropriate subcommittee. Offical responses are still being crafted. > >True, that wasn't my point. WG5 appears to have decided the content, >not the US public comment. There's an important difference here. Why >should anyone go to the trouble of reading the new draft when it comes >out? Our opinions won't change anything, apparently Wrong. The sad fact is that the much of the US public comment was clearly misinformed. People complained about features being deleted (there are NO deletions from x3.9-1978) requesting that features be added that were already in, and etc. Of the comment that was sensible, much was accepted. It should be noted that the informed commentators requested basically what WG5 did. There are bitter arguments about how to "spell" things, but the functionality requested is generally the same. Inasmuch as WG5 "held out" for a very short list of features, in a very large document, it seems quite unreasonable to bitch about WG5 running the show. Also note that you have had over a decade to voice your views. Modulo the misinformed comments, the vast majority of the remaining comment recapitulated long debates on the issues. You may feel slighted because you invested a couple of days in reading the document, and some hours crafting your remarks. But there are many committee members who spent years negotiating the document, and who articulated your (the group you :>) views over a period of months.... >> Things are looking good for acceptance of the standard. >> Keith H. Bierman > >Not to me. I will read the proposed standard with a fairly open mind, >but it appears that we will get the European standard instead of a >US standard. Since we (americans) wrote the document, and continue to do all the technical work, this is simply silly. >>I must confess a great deal of frustration with the committee. It would >seem fairly straightforward to take Fortran '77, add pointers, standard >bit operations, a structure or record data type, DO WHILE, REPEAT UNTIL, >fix up the I/O facilities (such as non-advancing I/O), intelligent DO >loop handling (EXIT ), a CASE statement, labels on the CASE, DO, >and IF statements. Vectorization, perhaps, would also be a good >addition. And many of us who use fortran to earn our daily bread, and took the trouble to follow along for the last decade (I only joined as a member reccently) are very, very certain that much more is needed. During the last several YEARS, the committee has tried to remove anything and everything not nailed down. Each feature has a very strong reason for being there, and this was the consensus (via voting) of those who cared enough to be part of the process. If you think you can craft a language which will displace fortran in your spare time good luck. Wirth has tried very hard, and is very good....but he hasn't even managed to displace C, much less fortran. I seriously doubt you will fare better. > >Instead, we have something that looks like a collision between Ada and >Pascal in a dark alley. It also looks like some of the committee are >frustrated language developers who don't like Fortran. No. They do, however, have a larger view. It makes no sense for a scientist to have to worry about how two entities are multiplied. The power of this sort of notion should be obvious from a quick study of linear algebra. The proposed standard will allow me to write code which will be easier to read, port, maintain and tune. This is what I DEMAND from a language for scientific applications. Your proposed f77 hacks do not go anywhere near far enough to solve the problems. > >I have a very bad feeling about this and I don't like it. Let Fortran >be Fortran. It is. It shall be. But it must evolve. ----------- Evolve or die. There is no other choice. Keith H. Bierman It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus