buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) (02/26/91)
A friend had been developing a major interactive geophysical processing system using VMS Fortran for over a year. Recently he has been forced to switch from a comfortable development environment to working at home, and he needs to buy a machine. He does almost all the processing in Fortran, but is learning C and X to build a user interface. (He is a very smart guy.) His friends tell him that switching from VMS Fortran to any Unix Fortran cuts productivity in half for Fortran development, so he is leaning heavily toward purchasing a VAXstation instead of a fast, cheap Unix box. I don't have any experience with Fortran under Unix, and the last time I did Fortran under VMS was ages ago. Is there really no acceptable Fortran development environment under Unix? Are the Unix Fortran debuggers that bad? If anyone has any first hand experience, I would really appreciate hearing about your opinions. Thanks alot, A. Lester Buck buck@siswat.lonestar.org ...!uhnix1!lobster!siswat!buck -- A. Lester Buck buck@siswat.lonestar.org ...!uhnix1!lobster!siswat!buck
carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll) (02/27/91)
In article <592@siswat.UUCP> buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) writes: >Is there really no acceptable Fortran development environment >under Unix? Are the Unix Fortran debuggers that bad? If anyone >has any first hand experience, I would really appreciate hearing >about your opinions. No, the unix debuggers are not bad; but VAX DEBUG is about as nice a debugger as I can imagine on a character-cell terminal. I have used a few different FORTRAN compilers under unix, and liked most of them, though I hesitate to recommend one because I know of at least one supplier whose compiler is very good on some CPUs and bad on others. In my experience, VAX users are phobic about the possibility of having to use another machine or OS. VMS makes things very easy for the *applications* programmer. However, if you have to make a lot of VMS system calls in your code, it's another story - besides the fact that you get much more bang for the buck from a Unix box. -- Jeff Carroll carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com
rcg@lpi.liant.com (Rick Gorton) (02/28/91)
In article <592@siswat.UUCP> buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) writes: >His friends tell him that switching from VMS >Fortran to any Unix Fortran cuts productivity in half for Fortran >development, so he is leaning heavily toward purchasing a VAXstation >instead of a fast, cheap Unix box. > >Is there really no acceptable Fortran development environment >under Unix? Are the Unix Fortran debuggers that bad? If anyone >has any first hand experience, I would really appreciate hearing >about your opinions. > >Thanks alot, > >A. Lester Buck buck@siswat.lonestar.org ...!uhnix1!lobster!siswat!buck Do your friends friends work for the company that makes VAXen? :-) Do they use VMS on a daily basis, or do they actually use UNIX? There are lots of choices for UNIX FORTRANs depending on the platform he gets. If there are a lot of VAX dependencies in his code, then any UNIX compiler he buys will need to support VAX extensions. There are numerous compiler vendors selling UNIX products, so your friend can pick and choose. I would like to think that our FORTRAN compiler and CodeWatch debugger are an excellent choice for your friend, but please note that I work on our SPARC code generator, so my focus is on the correctness and performance of the FORTRAN code rather than on the development environment/productivity issues. I think your friend will be pleasantly surprised at the number of choices available if he spends some time shopping around. -- Richard Gorton rcg@lpi.liant.com (508) 626-0006 Language Processors, Inc. Framingham, MA 01760 Hey! This is MY opinion. Opinions have little to do with corporate policy.
campbell@dev8h.mdcbbs.com (Tim Campbell) (03/01/91)
In article <1991Feb27.170224.20411@lpi.liant.com>, rcg@lpi.liant.com (Rick Gorton) writes: > In article <592@siswat.UUCP> buck@siswat.UUCP (A. Lester Buck) writes: >>His friends tell him that switching from VMS >>Fortran to any Unix Fortran cuts productivity in half for Fortran >>development, so he is leaning heavily toward purchasing a VAXstation >>instead of a fast, cheap Unix box. >> >>Is there really no acceptable Fortran development environment >>under Unix? Are the Unix Fortran debuggers that bad? If anyone >>has any first hand experience, I would really appreciate hearing >>about your opinions. >> >>A. Lester Buck buck@siswat.lonestar.org ...!uhnix1!lobster!siswat!buck > > Do your friends friends work for the company that makes VAXen? :-) > Do they use VMS on a daily basis, or do they actually use UNIX? I was thinking the same thing. > I would like to think that our FORTRAN compiler and CodeWatch debugger > are an excellent choice for your friend, but please note that > I work on our SPARC code generator, so my focus is on the correctness > and performance of the FORTRAN code rather than on the development > environment/productivity issues. > Richard Gorton rcg@lpi.liant.com (508) 626-0006 > Language Processors, Inc. Framingham, MA 01760 > Hey! This is MY opinion. Opinions have little to do with corporate policy. -- Richard: On a VAX, the debugger can run in a graphical or text environment. Even in the text environment, it sets up a 3 or 4 part screen to show code, output, commands, etc. CodeWatch has all the functionality, but it lacks the "window" style environment. - You tell the debugger to list a few lines of code, and after a few commands, it's scrolled off the screen and you have to tell it to list more. DBX has the same problem, but Sun fixed this with the DBXTool to provide the graphical/window interface to dbx. I was really hoping to find the same functionality for CodeWatch. I don't use LPI/Fortran (but I have evaluated it), I have however used the PL/I compiler quite a bit - it's probably by far the best PL/I implementation available on a workstation. I had to give up using LPI/Fortran because as I recall, it had problems linking with code produced by Sun C (it extended function names with underscores on both sides and I think Sun extended the names with underscores only to the left. I thought this was odd because LPI-PL/I seems to have no trouble linking to Sun C. PC's easily have the debugger market sewn up. There's absolutely no debugger in existence which can compare with either the Borland or Microsoft integrated debugging/development environments. If you really want to have the best workstation debugger, take a lesson from one of these guys. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In real life: Tim Campbell - Electronic Data Systems Corp. Usenet: campbell@dev8.mdcbbs.com @ McDonnell Douglas M&E - Cypress, CA also: tcampbel@einstein.eds.com @ EDS - Troy, MI CompuServe: 71631,654 Prodigy: MPTX77A P.S. If anyone asks, just remember, you never saw any of this -- in fact, I wasn't even here.
acw@ut-emx.uucp (Anthony C. Woodbury) (03/04/91)
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hts@lpi.liant.com (Tom Sandlin) (03/06/91)
In article <1991Mar1.103001.1@dev8h.mdcbbs.com> campbell@dev8h.mdcbbs.com (Tim Campbell) writes: > > >On a VAX, the debugger can run in a graphical or text environment. Even in >the text environment, it sets up a 3 or 4 part screen to show code, >output, commands, etc. > >CodeWatch has all the functionality, but it lacks the "window" style >environment. - You tell the debugger to list a few lines of code, and after >a few commands, it's scrolled off the screen and you have to tell it to >list more. DBX has the same problem, but Sun fixed this with the DBXTool to >provide the graphical/window interface to dbx. I was really hoping to find >the same functionality for CodeWatch. The good news is that a graphical/windowed based interface is now available for LPI-Codewatch. X11 and Character-Based versions are available. The X11 version uses all the capabilities of the Motif user interface and X windows. It provides a source window and a command window. The character-based interface can run on any ASCII terminal, without a graphical windowing system. It provides source, command, and output windows. For further info, contact : Kristen Telford Language Processors, Inc. 959 Concord St. Framingham, Ma 01701-4613 Telephone: (508) 626-0006 Telefax: (508) 626-2221 Telex 951671