From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Thread: 1094ba,c4cb2c432feebd9d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid1094ba,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsdst02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!postmaster.news.prodigy.com!newssvr11.news.prodigy.com.POSTED!d58ee217!not-for-mail Message-ID: <447193AA.8060700@sbcglobal.net> From: Tim Prince Reply-To: tprince@nospammyrealbox.com User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (Windows/20060308) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.125.161.25 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr11.news.prodigy.com 1148294060 ST000 68.125.161.25 (Mon, 22 May 2006 06:34:20 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 06:34:20 EDT Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com X-UserInfo1: FKPO@SVG\JUMB\HXWBO@^RLAVB]FBL@MAHU^_BAMEH]TCDYG^WHKAH_[JTXDX_KI\VB]JBVMS^YT_G[CZVWAOS\DHFWEH]@KGXYHB\_CMDSFABP^J[AHHRKARLE_JDBLJ\XA[JRMEI]MGJSPB\Y]^KG\@S^@VQKI_Q[G@@_ACSARASDEFLBJ]S\GFNTUAVBL Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 10:34:20 GMT Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:4330 comp.lang.fortran:10061 Date: 2006-05-22T10:34:20+00:00 List-Id: Nasser Abbasi wrote: > I like to discuss the technical reasons why Ada is not used as much as > Fortran for scientific and number crunching type applications? > > > > To make the discussion more focused, let's assume you want to start > developing a large scientific application in the domain where Fortran is > commonly used. Say you want to develop a new large Finite Elements Methods > program or large computational physics simulation system. Assume you can > choose either Ada or Fortran. > > > > What are the technical language specific reasons why Fortran would be > selected over Ada? > > > > I happened to know a little about Ada and Fortran, and from what I know, I > think Ada would be an excellent choice due to its strong typing, good > support for numerical types and good Math library. > > > > I know also that Fortran is supposed to be better/faster when it comes to > working with large Arrays (Matrices), but it is not clear to me why that is, > and if it is still true with Ada 05. Something about arrays aliasing, but > not sure how that is. > > > > I am also not sure on the support of sparse matrices in both languages' > libraries. > > > > It is known that Ada strong domain is realtime and safety critical > applications. I never understood why Ada never became popular in the > scientific field in particular in areas such as computational physics or CFD > or such similar fields. > Following contains some personal opinions formed by reading about it, not by actual comparison of functionality, which has seldom been possible: If the design goals of Ada had been fully realized, the major advantage of Ada would have been built-in support for multi-processing. f2008 intends to make up for that, in the most relevant case, with co-arrays. Add-ons like OpenMP and MPI have kept Fortran ahead, for practical purposes. The additional difficulty of learning sufficient Ada and finding an efficient compiler, and increased difficulty of development, have served to restrict it to the application domains most directly targeted and financed.