Re: Fun with C

[Paul Colin Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

Peter C. Chapin <PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu> sent on April 24th, 2011:

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|"On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:47:51 -0700 (PDT), "George P."                     |
|<george.priv@gmail.com> wrote:                                             |
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|>Surprisingly, while it went through series of dramatic transitions        |
|>(f90 to f08),  it seems that F community is not obsessed with backward    |
|>compatibility as much as C community.  Compilers are able compile and     |
|>link to old legacy code but for those who writes software there is a      |
|>new format.                                                               |
|>                                                                          |
|>Anyone knows how widely it is still being used and what is                |
|>demographics of it?                                                       |
|                                                                           |
|Fortran is definitely still being used. I have at times lurked on          |
|comp.lang.fortran and it is at least as active as this group (I think more |
|active). And yes, starting with Fortran 90 the language was utterly        |
|transformed and is now reasonably modern. I believe the latest version     |
|(Fortran 2008) is even object oriented."                                   |
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It was almost decided for the upcoming SPEC CPUv6 that the only
languages allowed would be Fortran; C; and C++. Fortunately, I
successfully argued that Ada should be allowed, and I mentioned
SofCheck AdaMagic.

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|"My impression is that Fortran is still primarly used in its traditional   |
|area of numeric computation where C is considered an upstart language. In  |
|fact in a head-to-head comparison between C and Fortran it is common for a |
|Fortran program to outperform an equivalent C program. I've explored this  |
|effect myself with a toy program that does Gaussian elmination. Thus people|
|interested in maximum numeric performance are drawn to Fortran."           |
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VHDL would outperform Fortran.

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|"Ada could also be a contender in this application area but Fortran's array|
|operators are so nice and modern Fortran compilers are so mature that the  |
|language is hard to beat when it comes to numerical applications.          |
|                                                                           |
|In any case, don't joke about Fortran as if it's some kind of dinosaur. It |
|will just make the people in the Fortran community roll their eyes in      |
|disgust... or amusement. :)                                                |
|                                                                           |
|Peter"                                                                     |
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You could educate this ignoramus: "Dr." David Sinclair of Dublin City
so-called University:
WWW.computing.DCU.Ie/~davids/

In the academic year 1999-2000 he tried to convince me that the only
reason someone still used FORTRAN was because of legacy code, and that
all new number-crunching code should be in Java!