FORTRAN (was Re: indentation)

[Phil Austin]

aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch) writes:

> In article <14411.53378.154350.793014 at weyr.cnri.reston.va.us>,
> Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
> >Mark Jackson writes:
> >>
> >> And Fortran.  Don't forget Fortran.
> >
> >  I guess I got lucky; having never learned Fortran, I don't have to
> >forget it.  ;-)
> 
> Hmmm...  I wonder who the youngest person in this group is who has
> actually used FORTRAN on the job.  I'm 32; I did the work twelve years
> ago.
> --
>                       --- Aahz (@netcom.com)
> 

Since I've done fewer than my normal quota of futile things this
week, I thought I'd post to remind people that:

1) Standard Fortran (aka Fortran95) is a very different language than
   whatever flavor Aahz used in 1977.  For an introduction to
   modern Fortran, check out Paul Dubois' lecture notes at:

ftp://ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/OBF90/

2) I'm hard pressed to think of a reason why working scientists who
   solve numerical problems every day shouldn't be steered towards
   Fortran/Python, at least until a C++ compiler vendor comes up with
   a working implementation of the export keyword, and allows us to
   compile a 100 line Blitz++ program in less than 5 minutes on a 233
   MHz pentium.  Once C++ compilers mature to the point where
   expression templates impose as little compile-time overhead as
   Fortran intrinsic arrays, it might be time for scientists to reexamine
   their language choices.


Regards, Phil

-- 

Phil Austin
Associate Professor
Atmospheric Sciences Programme
Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences
Geography #217
University of British Columbia
1984 W Mall
Vancouver, BC  V6T 1Z2
CANADA