Re: Object-oriented Fortran vs. Ada 95?

[Ted Dennison <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com>]

Sergio Gelato wrote:
> 
> This thread, however, was motivated by the question whether it is appropriate
> to add full-fledged Object-Oriented features to Fortran. Unless there is a
> clear need for OOP in conjunction with the kind of features HPF provides,
> one can still argue "use Ada if you need OOP, Fortran if you need automatic
> parallelism on good old arrays".
> 
Ahhh. Unfortunatly (for you Fortran guys) this thread was cossposted
into
the Ada newsgroup in mid-discussion, with no explanation of what HPF is.

(...slight pause while I check DejaNews...)

Ok. So we are talking about compiler features (usually a pre-compiler)
that distributes data and code across a massively parallel architecture 
system. Hmm...kinda interesting.

When an architecture (such as the SMP Vaxen or the Harris Nighthawk)
implements parallel processing at the OS level, I would expect my Ada
compiler to distribute my tasks to the various processors. When an
architecture (such as an array-processor like the Cray) implements
parallel processing at the machine instruction level, I would 
expect my (Ada) compiler to search for inherent parallelism in my
compiled code and optimize accordingly (No small task, I'm sure).

As for OOP, I think I'd have to agree with your argument. Fortran was
not designed with OOP in mind. Merrily tacking on features to the 
language when there isn't a desperate need for them will only hasten 
its decent into entropy. Better to let Fortran live (or die) as 
Fortran.

> Speaking of Annex E to the Ada 95 standard (distributed processing):
> is there a free/inexpensive implementation of that annex that will
> work---reasonably efficiently, of course---with GNAT on an IBM SP2?
> I was depressed to see all those
>   begin
>     null;
>   end;
> in the body of the relevant package (s-rpc.adb) in the GNAT distribution...
> Pointers to a more useful replacement will be gratefully received.

My suspicion is that it will reamain like that until someone who wants
it implements it themselves (or pays ACT to do it for them). Even
then it will probably only exist on the one platform. But if you are
really curious, you could always e-mail ACT at 
   mailto:report@gnat.com
They should be able to tell you if an implementation exists.

Of course, If Fortran supports it on the IBM SP2, you could always 
write the package in Fortran, and link s-rpc.adb to it with interface
pragmas. 

-- 
T.E.D.          
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