Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Kenneth Mays]

Hello,

I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada 
code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language 
with a better one? Should we
RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that 
great formula translator of 1977) should
be maintained but not used for future development?

From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?

Ken (kmays@msn.com)
USAF

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Linh C. Nguyen]

Kenneth Mays wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada
> code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
> better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language
> with a better one? Should we
> RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that
> great formula translator of 1977) should
> be maintained but not used for future development?
> 
> From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?
> 
> Ken (kmays@msn.com)
> USAF

Not by the engineer or scientist's point of view.
-- 

Linh.C.Nguyen@cpmx.saic.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Chris Morgan]

Linh C. Nguyen wrote (regarding FORTRAN77 vs. Ada):

> Not by the engineer or scientist's point of view.

Disagree!

I did Mechanical Engineering at University including Finite Element
analysis software in FORTRAN77. Now I think Ada is much better. I
respect the position that the wealth of F77 code gives it the advantage,
but it is simple to interface FORTRAN to Ada95. So for writing new code
I still say Ada is better!

-- chris.morgan@baesema.co.uk

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[busigin]

In <317906B6.42853EF6@cpmx.saic.com>, "Linh C. Nguyen" <Linh.C.Nguyen@cpmx.saic.com> writes:
>Kenneth Mays wrote:
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada
>> code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
>> better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language
>> with a better one? Should we
>> RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that
>> great formula translator of 1977) should
>> be maintained but not used for future development?
>> 
>> From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?
>> 
>> Ken (kmays@msn.com)
>> USAF
>
>Not by the engineer or scientist's point of view.
>-- 
>
>Linh.C.Nguyen@cpmx.saic.com
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sorry, but I disagree. This engineer/scientist suggests that you
seriously consider Ada over Fortran for any new work. Ada is a
far better tool. You can still call your good reliable Fortran libraries
from Ada.

Anthony Busigin
busigin@ibm.net

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Robert Dewar]

Linh says

"Not by the engineer or scientist's point of view."

responding to the questoin of whether Ada 95 measures up as a possible
replacement for Fortran?

Care to elaborate? I certainly know that if you consider only raw
performance on super computers, then Ada 95 may not match Fortran
performance, but it is after all conceivable that Fortran engineers
and even scientists might be interested in factors other than raw
performance (e.g. getting reliable and mainable programs, and for
that matter getting the right answers).

Here is one respect in which Ada 95 is clearly superior to Fortran
for numerical applications. In Ada 95, there are accuracy requirements
for the trig functions, there are no such requirements in Ada 95.

Someone sent me some interesting mail recently. They asked about my
statement that GNAT did not necessarily meet these accuracy requirements,
and wondered if they had to take special precautsions in writing code
using the trig functions. I explained that what I meant was that we
used the same routines that Fortran uses, and of course that menat we
had no idea if they met the accuracy requirements of Ada :-)

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Theodore E. Dennison]

Kenneth Mays wrote:
> 
> I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada
> code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
> better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language
> with a better one? Should we
> RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that
> great formula translator of 1977) should
> be maintained but not used for future development?
> 
> From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?

Frankly, as someone who was introduced to Fortran-77 before C, Pacscal, 
and Ada, I'm not sure what Fortran-77 DOES measure up to. I hated it
from the start.

Fortran-77 code MAY be faster than Ada code, but in my book that really
doen't make up for the lack of support for dynamic-allocation, strong
typing, exception handling, concurrency support, generics....

And lets not forget that syntax that only makes sense to folks who
have used it for 30 years (or to computing history buffs).

Most of the arguments I hear in favor of Fortran these days were 
heard in favor of Assembly (against Fortran) 30 years ago. 

To be fair though, I do know of someone here who feels quite strongly
the other way. If I have time, I'll try to get him to post a response
(of course, I'll have to teach him how to use a newsreader first. ;-) ).

-- 
T.E.D.          
                |  Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com  |
                |  Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net              |
                |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison         |

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Theodore E. Dennison]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Here is one respect in which Ada 95 is clearly superior to Fortran
> for numerical applications. In Ada 95, there are accuracy requirements
> for the trig functions, there are no such requirements in Ada 95.

This should read more like,
"In Ada 95, there are accuracy requirements for the trig functions,
 there are no such requirements in Fortran".

Robert asked me to post this correction for him, as he is temporarily
away from an internet terminal. Apparently he has trouble bringing
himself to type "the F word". :-)

-- 
T.E.D.          
                |  Work - mailto:dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com  |
                |  Home - mailto:dennison@iag.net              |
                |  URL  - http://www.iag.net/~dennison         |

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[@ 1996-04-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)]

"Linh C. Nguyen" <Linh.C.Nguyen@cpmx.saic.com> wrote:
> Kenneth Mays wrote:
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada
> > code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
> > better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language
> > with a better one? Should we
> > RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that
> > great formula translator of 1977) should
> > be maintained but not used for future development?
> > 
> > From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?
> > 
> > Ken (kmays@msn.com)
> > USAF
> 
> Not by the engineer or scientist's point of view.
> -- 
> 
> Linh.C.Nguyen@cpmx.saic.com
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Couldn't disagree more !!

Do you have strong enough personal experience to back this statement ??


Regards,

Ralph Paul

	ralph@ifr.luftfahrt.uni-stuttgart.de 

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[David Weller]

In article <dewar.830136560@schonberg>, Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Here is one respect in which Ada 95 is clearly superior to Fortran
>for numerical applications. In Ada 95, there are accuracy requirements
				^^^^^^
>for the trig functions, there are no such requirements in Ada 95.
>							   ^^^^^^

Um, Robert, your Freudian slip is showing :-)



-- 
    Visit the Ada 95 Booch Components Homepage: www.ocsystems.com/booch
           This is not your father's Ada -- lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Thomas Koenig]

[Also crossposted to c.l.f]

In comp.lang.ada, KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays) wrote:

>I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada 
>code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
>better than FORTRAN?

Ada 95 is certainly better than the obsolete Fortran 77.  Fortran 90
is a much more modern language, can do many of the things that Ada
can do, and certainly is an alternative to Ada worth considering even
when writing new code.  While Ada 95 has a much cleaner overall design,
and object orientation, Fortran 90 (and especially HPF/Fortran 95) has a
clear edge over Ada in compiler availability, high performance and
automatic vectorization and paralleization.

Tossing Fortran 77 in favour of either Fortran 90 or Ada 95 is a
Good Thing.

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[David Kristola]

My $0.02:

If you go to Ada95, make training part of the upgrade, or you will have
people writing FORTRAN in Ada95.

david kristola

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Jim Carr]

"Theodore E. Dennison" <dennison@escmail.orl.mmc.com> writes:
>
>Frankly, as someone who was introduced to Fortran-77 before C, Pacscal, 
>and Ada, I'm not sure what Fortran-77 DOES measure up to. 

 That is easy: C77, Ada77, and Pascal77.  

 Let's not forget that f77's main competitors were a number of languages 
 with interesting features that were not widely available under a variety 
 of systems, and Cobol, which has 229 billion lines of code waiting for 
 the year 2000 to roll around.  ;-) 

 Any comparison should be to f90, which has some of the features 
 mentioned below, complicated by the need for downward compatibility. 

>Fortran-77 code MAY be faster than Ada code, but in my book that really
>doen't make up for the lack of support for dynamic-allocation, strong
>typing, exception handling, concurrency support, generics....

-- 
 James A. Carr   <jac@scri.fsu.edu>     |  F. Lee Bailey says that  
    http://www.scri.fsu.edu/~jac/       |  Tallahassee has a very well run  
 Supercomputer Computations Res. Inst.  |  Federal correctional facility, 
 Florida State, Tallahassee FL 32306    |  but the food is too fatty. 

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[Peter Hermann]

Kenneth Mays (KMays@msn.com) wrote:
: Hello,

: I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada 
: code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
: better than FORTRAN? Should we replace this old programming language 
: with a better one? Should we
: RETRAIN the thinking processes of our MBA students that FORTRAN (that 
: great formula translator of 1977) should
: be maintained but not used for future development?

: From what we have have seen of Ada95, does it measure up?

: Ken (kmays@msn.com)
: USAF

IMHO, Ada is the natural successor of Fortran77 and,
IMHO, Ada95 is the better alternative to Fortran2000.
Having worked more than 15 years with Fortran and experienced
every niche and pitfall in Fortran, I was specially attracted
by Ada, because Ada is just the same step size as the step
from Assembler to Fortran in terms of good engineering abstraction.
With Ada95, we have finally a language which easily copes
with any existing object-oriented language, hands down.
It has parallel processing, distributed processing,
real-time support and so on in the language standard of 1995.
Ada95 is the adequate software engineering language for
the beginning of the next millenium.

I have stopped considering Fortran as an acceptable tool
with the appearing nightmare of Fortran90, a patchy language
looking like a Ford T model wanting to be a modern car based on
repare-patches. F90 constantly tries to do the same like
Ada but will never reach it. F90 looks like an automobile
graveyard with all its historical burdens.

With the superior semantic information, an Ada-compiler
has many more opportunities to optimize code than the
F- and C-languages from 20 years ago.
(see the article "C vs. Ada:Arguing Performance Religion"
 AdaLetters,Nov/Dec'95,page 67)

--
Peter Hermann  Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de
Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen
Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney)

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[AdaWorks]

Kenneth Mays (KMays@msn.com) wrote:
: Hello,

: I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada 
: code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
: better than FORTRAN? 

  HmmmMMMMMMmmmmm.  Was it Dijkstra who said, "I don't know what
  programming language we will be using in the next century, but
  I know it will be called Fortran." ???

  Richard Riehle
  adaworks@netcom.com
-- 

richard@adaworks.com
AdaWorks Software Engineering
Suite 27
2555 Park Boulevard
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(415) 328-1815
FAX  328-1112

Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!?

[marukka]

Thomas Koenig <ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> writes:
 
>>I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada 
>>code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is
>>better than FORTRAN?
 
I'd like to add my nickle's worth.  But first, my qualifications: 18 years
of scientific software developement for large DoD contractors. 15 years of
FORTRAN, 10 years of Ada, and way too much Mil-Std 2167A.  Enough of this.
 
Depending on what your applications are, Ada may have advantages over FORTRAN.
It also has disadvantages.  Generally, FORTRAN compilers work well on all
systems, but Ada development tends to be harder on Unix systems than on VAX/VMS.
Don't be fooled by slogans.  It is just as easy to write spaghetti code in
Ada as in (I've seen many examples personally.)  Also, when translating
code into Ada, it is often tempting to over type.  Too many user-defined types
in a strongly typed language leads to innumerable headaches.  Furthermore, if
you try to translate FORTRAN-77 code into Ada, that's just what you'll get:
 code written in Ada.  It won't be either pretty or efficient.
 
You don't mention what platforms your code resides on.  That could be an
important factor.  You also neglected to mention what kind of applications
you are running.  Anything that involves string processing, message routing,
or the like is probably better off in Ada.  If you are tracking satellites,
processing radar images, or guessing weather, FORTRAN is probably the better
choice (especially since, in the latter case, you will probably be using
a high-performance computer like a Cray-90, a CM-5, or even an IBM-3090.)
The high performance computers tend to like FORTRANs better than Ada.
 
			Mark Von Hendy
  Sr. Scientific Programmer/Analyst (but what's a job title anyway? :)