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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,94f5b26bc297a928 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,7a6a623afb38d7f7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1094ba,7a6a623afb38d7f7 X-Google-Attributes: gid1094ba,public From: pvanesch@vub.ac.be (Vanesch P.) Subject: Re: Fortran vs C++ vs. etc (has little to do with realtime anymore) Date: 1997/09/16 Message-ID: <5vlhoj$1ul@rc1.vub.ac.be>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 272868751 References: <5ve7c6$f4m$1@info.uah.edu> Organization: Brussels Free Universities VUB/ULB Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-09-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dr. Krishnan Chittur (chitturk@email.uah.edu) wrote: : Joseph M. O'Leary (NOSPAMjmoleary@earthlink.net) wrote: : : Jeffrey Templon wrote in article : : > The fact remains (and will for some time) that many scientific : : programmers : : > are scientists FIRST and programmers SECOND. : ........ : : > So one of my reasons for Fortran still being around: you can write : : > a reasonable program which runs reasonably efficiently just by more : : > or less typing in an expression of a simple algorithm. Fortran's "mental : : > model" of the computer is very simple. : Well said! ... I still have to find an environment that will allow : me to develop a GUI as simply as I can write Fortran Code to : do calculations ... if there is one, please let me know. I think this is an essential point. FORTRAN is well-suited to do calculations and hard-core scientific computation. But more complex structures (a GUI is program-wise a lot more complicated than a scientific calculation) are not dealt too well with in fortran I think. I've seen this in the high-energy community. Both elements are present there: complex software systems and hard-core scientific computing. Well, I've seen quite a mess in the FORTRAN implementation (rather ad hoc) of the complicated datastructures that had to be manipulated. It would have been much better done (and the tendency now is - finally - to switch to things like C++) in a language suited for the task. On the other hand, I've also seen the opposite. A collegue of mine wrote a MONSTER program in C++ to do some straightforward matrix manipulations. The graphical user interface launches tens and tens of windows in which one can manipulate parameters, look at graphs etc... He worked for almost a year on the thing. He is a computer scientist, btw, I'm not. I'm an engineer and physicist. It takes about 10 minutes to even start up the thing, getting your X-terminal cluttered with all those windows. I've done the same thing in F77, but with an ASCII steering file, in about a month... and guess what ? my program tackles systems he can't even dream of handling in just a few hours (his can't do it, it just runs out of 1 GB swap space !!) I get a nice ASCII file with my results. For smaller systems, my program is about 20 times faster, with less memory, than his, on the same system. I think every language has its uses. FORTRAN is old and very elementary on the conceptual level. For most modern computing applications (graphics, process steering, multi-user things etc) it is simply too elementary. But for applications where these elementary concepts are sufficient (such as scientific computing - which is usually advanced on the scientific level and very simple on the computational level) it allows indeed to write a reasonably simple program that behaves resonably well by someone who has some reasonable knowledge of computers but is not a computer scientist, without involving a lot of abstract computer-think. But if the project is too ambitious, and the abstract computer think is really needed, well... I don't think it is a good idea to do it in FORTRAN. cheers, Patrick.