Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!gatech!prism!loligo!mccalpin
From: mccalpin@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (John McCalpin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: yes vs. no on f8x
Keywords: f8x, x3j3, wg5, ansi
Message-ID: <584@loligo.cc.fsu.edu>
Date: 13 Apr 89 23:28:10 GMT
References: <24130@beta.lanl.gov> <98678@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <867@a.lanl.gov>
Reply-To: mccalpin@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (John McCalpin)
Organization: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
Lines: 70

In article <867@a.lanl.gov> alm@a.lanl.gov (Alex Marusak) writes:
>
>This is the crux of X3J3's problem.  I think you have profoundly
>misunderstood the public review comments.  The scientists and
>engineers are not saying that they lack the brainpower to learn
>Fortran 8x. They are saying that they don't WANT to.

	This makes no noticeable sense at all as an objection to the
	current draft.  If "scientists and engineeers" do not want to
	learn any of the new features in the language, then they
	certainly don't have to.  I am quite certain that people will
	continue to write in FORTRAN-77 for a decade after the new
	compilers are out, since we have people who still write
	FORTRAN-66 even now in 1989....

	If the "scientists and engineers" do not want anyone else to be
	able to use the new features (perhaps out of fear that one day
	they might have to use someone else's code), then we might as
	well quit doing science, too.  We might accidently learn 
	something that they don't understand, and would have to learn
	about....

>They believe
>that Fortran should be a powerful tool to be used and appreciated,
>not a hurdle to be overcome.

	I certainly agree.  It is about time for Fortran to be made
	into a "powerful tool".  This requires most of the changes
	(like modules, user-defined types, & operator overloading)
	that you claim that the "scientists and engineers" oppose.

	The new power of the current draft language certainly allows
	fo abuse (witness the bizarre example of the package to do
	arithmetic on Roman numerals in the Argonne report on F8X),
	but programs that are carefully written using modularity,
	data structures, and operator overloading are MUCH easier
	to read and maintain than their FORTRAN-77 equivalents.
	
>When I joined X3J3 in the early '80s, I had the following rule of
>thumb: I would read a proposal, and if I didn't understand it I
>would read it again. If I still didn't understand it, I would vote
>'no'.

	The writing style of the proposal has nothing to do with
	the value of the language.  I certainly found the previous
	draft to be mysterious in parts (and inconsistent in others),
	but I also do not expect to use the standard as a textbook.

>Mr. Bierman, the public is telling you and me that they have other
>important things to do.

	Some of us are telling you (X3J3) that we have work to do, and
	we are tired of putting up with the archaic language of
	Fortran.  The new draft (or something much like it) offers the
	only realistic chance for a widespread (i.e. portable) language
	to exist that provides both abstraction and performance for
	scientific and engineering applications.

	I, for one, am very anxious to get this standardization process
	over with so that the manufacturers can do their implementations
	and I can get on with my work.

>Regards,
>Alex Marusak

-- 
----------------------   John D. McCalpin   ------------------------
Dept of Oceanography & Supercomputer Computations Research Institute
mccalpin@masig1.ocean.fsu.edu		mccalpin@nu.cs.fsu.edu
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