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 X-Google-Thread: 103376,56250291936154a0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: gisle@apal.ii.uib.no (Gisle S�lensminde) Subject: Re: Where is the elusive jump command? Date: 2000/03/31 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 604728769 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit References: <38D771CA.D41AF9B5@port.ac.uk> <8bq7ku$mc8$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <38E0E723.C39C392@quadruscorp.com> <8brfm4$4uc$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <38E240D1.DB36C983@quadruscorp.com> <38E2333B.2109F2BB@lmtas.lmco.com> <8bu4ek$412$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8bul06$9aa1@news.cis.okstate.edu> <38E396E7.45941282@quadruscorp.com> Organization: University of Bergen, Norway Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-03-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <38E396E7.45941282@quadruscorp.com>, Marin D. Condic wrote: >David Starner wrote: >> You might be surprised, though. The Comp Sci department still offers >> Fortran 77 (taught by the prof who was a graduate student when Fortran >> first appeared), and the Engineering Department forces all engineering >> students to take Fortran 90 (Intro to Engineering Programming). That CS >> Fortran class has more enrollment than the Ada class, too. >> >Aside from the fact that there is tons of Fortran code lying around >already, is there any reason why "number crunching" or >"scientific/engineering software" couldn't be taught/done in Ada? My >Fortran experience was back in the Fortran 77 days and I don't recall >anything being in the language that couldn't be done just as well - if >not better - in Ada95. (Especially given Ada's type capabilities and >precise definitions for math ops, numeric attributes, etc.) > >And if the only argument against it is the tons of existing math >libraries, then theres Ada's interface capability to argue in its favor. > >Its a market that could be tapped - and maybe one that isn't already >anti-Ada biased. Hmmmmmmmmm........ > The numerical capacities of f77 is no way better than those of Ada, but there are some realy agressive optimizing compilers producing very effective code. An example of this is the fortran compiler at HP/UX. There is no Ada frontend to this technology, and HP/UX is frequently used in engineering/numeric environments. Since many of the new f90 features was inefficient in the start, there where(is) evan a strong scepticism against f90. I have in fact worked with maintaining numeric code in f77, and my impression is that it's very hard to convince them to learn any new programming language, including f90, but there are some move towards C++, and I'm not sure that C++ is any better than f90 for numeric code. -- Gisle S�lensminde ( gisle@ii.uib.no ) ln -s /dev/null ~/.netscape/cookies