From: joelw@convex.com (Joel Williamson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Welcome to HPFF
Keywords: HPFF, High Performance Fortran
Date: 14 Aug 92 18:12:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Aug14.181229.12520
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In article <1992Aug14.092952.11572@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de> i2041101@rzphy1.rz.tu-bs.de (Paulini) writes:
>In article <Bsy43C.9BG@rice.edu>, chk@rice.edu (Charles Koelbel) writes:
>|> 
>|> Welcome to the High Performance Fortran Forum!
>|> 
>|> 
>|> WHAT IS HPFF?
>|> =============
>|> 
>|>      ..... deleted ....
>|>
>|> Our intent is to develop extensions to Fortran which
>|> provide support for high performance programming on a wide variety of
>|> machines, including massively parallel SIMD and MIMD systems and
>|> vector processors.  Some of the topics considered will be
>|> 
>|>      ..... deleted ....
> 
>Stop it! I'm programming now for several years scientific applications
>in FORTRAN 77 because I must do it, due to libraries and already existing
>programs in FORTRAN. Compared to other languages (even to cryptic C - Codes)
>FORTRAN is not recommendable as a programming language at all. It is merely
>a collection of erratic ideas and lacks a real conception. In my opinion it is
>not useful to make any extensions or "improvements" to the language (this also
>holds true for Fortran 90). A better way seems to me to design a comptetely
>new language or to use an existing better (like C, Ada, Modula or whatever).
>And then to decide no longer to support programming in FORTRAN but to use
>existing FORTRAN codes in the new language in a portable way (e.g. by defining
>an interface or a standard linking method or something similar).
>
>The situation now is that people who are used to a 'real' programming language
>(mostly C) only write programs in FORTRAN if there is no other way ... like me.
>If in some years most of the numeric software is available in C, all new
>numeric programmers won't code in FORTRAN and many of the old will convert too.
>
>
>-- 
>#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------#
># Joachim Paulini                                                             #
>#                                            Tel    (0531) 391-5190           #
># TU Braunschweig                            Fax    (0531) 391-5833           #
># Institut f. Theoretische Physik            e-mail i2041101@ws.rz.tu-bs.de   #
># Mendelssohnstrasse 3                              i2041101@dbstu1.bitnet    #
># 3300 Braunschweig / Germany                                                 #
>#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------#

This debate has gone on for decades now, and the scientific marketplace
continues to choose Fortran.  There are literally billions of lines of
existing Fortran code, and their owners have a strong predilection to
continue to run them on modern machines.  When the proponents of the
better languages offer to 1) convert all existing code to the new
language; 2) assure that equal or better performance is attained; and 3)
re-educate (for free) all of the Fortran programmers so that they are
proficient in the new language, then perhaps the marketplace will vote
differently.  All of the above may occur naturally in the next sevral
decades, but until then it is a losing position to promote.

Joel Williamson
-- 
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran