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From: Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: The answer to "Can Ada replace FORTRAN for numerical computation?
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2019 06:53:03 +0100
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Date: 2019-07-22T06:53:03+01:00
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"Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org> writes:

> In 1980 there was a paper titled "Can Ada replace FORTRAN for
> numerical computation?"
>
> ACM SIGPLAN Notices
> Volume 16, Number 12, December, 1981
>
>
> https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=954264
>
> "
> In July 1980, the proposed final form of the Ada programming
> language was released by the U.S. Department of Defense [1]. Even
> though Ada was not designed specifically for general numeric
> scientific computation, nevertheless the question arises to whether
> it is appropriate for this purpose. This question can best
> be answered by consideration of the following question: Is Ada
> a suitable replacement for the programming language FORTRAN? This
> paper discusses those constructs of Ada which are pertinent to the
> matter and are considered defective. It is noted that the array defects
> are exceptionally critical, not providing needed capabilities
> that exist in FORTRAN and have been extensively used for
>  a quarter century."
>
> I can't find free version of the paper, any one knows of one? but
> there was more discussion on it here:
>
> https://archive.org/stream/DTIC_ADA139224/DTIC_ADA139224_djvu.txt
>
> (just search for string "can ada")
>
> _But_ to answer the question in the title of the paper, and
> after FORTY years, it is clear now that the answer is a
> resounding NO.

I can't believe that the visible complaint (the ordering convention for
matrices, row- vs column-major) would seriously impact the mental
dexterity required to write mathematical code.

And now we have Convention (Fortran), which makes it not-too-hard to
interface to existing Fortran code.