lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) (10/23/88)
I would like to cast a very strong vote for an intermediate FORTRAN
standard; indeed an existing standard: watfiv (or its updated successor
watfor77). The watsoft FORTRAN system has been around for years
(indeed watfiv existed before the 77 standard, but of course the
standards committee couldn't endorse an existing system and offend all
the other vendors).
I have had enough of this esoteric bull about what a new FORTRAN
needs. I have no doubt that watfor77 cannot be used directly, but is a
reasonable and modest extension to FORTRAN-77 what does work and is
proven! FORTRAN-88 is now one year late, and probably won't show up in
99 at this rate. Let's take something that does work now and turn it
into a standard with as minimal modifications as possible!
Edouard Lagache
School of Education
U.C. Berkeley
lagache@violet.berkeley.edu
P.S. One other reason toward my bias toward watfor77 is that it has
been a very nice dialect for the purposes of teaching. The "high
powered" loops of Fortran-88 may be powerful, but they are not
very intuitive. With all the criteria that has been thrown at the
new standard, I think one very important criteria has been
forgotten: ease of learning and use. Because FORTRAN is used by
part time programmers, it should be an easy language to learn and
remember. While some of the features of Fortran-88 do help users
deal with programming (for example, providing vector operators
that are closer to actual mathematical notation), in general it
appears that Fortran-88 is a harder language to use. I believe
that ease of use should be high on the priority list of the
standard framers - is it?khb%chiba@Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - Sun Tactical Engineering) (10/24/88)
In article <15881@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) writes: > > > I would like to cast a very strong vote for an intermediate FORTRAN > standard; indeed an existing standard: watfiv (or its updated successor > watfor77). The watsoft FORTRAN system has been around for years > (indeed watfiv existed before the 77 standard, but of course the > standards committee couldn't endorse an existing system and offend all > the other vendors). WATFIV does not address the concerns of the bulk of users. It is not suitable as a replacement for the current draft. > > P.S. One other reason toward my bias toward watfor77 is that it has > been a very nice dialect for the purposes of teaching. The "high > powered" loops of Fortran-88 may be powerful, but they are not > very intuitive. With all the criteria that has been thrown at the > new standard, I think one very important criteria has been > forgotten: ease of learning and use. Because FORTRAN is used by > part time programmers, it should be an easy language to learn and > remember. While some of the features of Fortran-88 do help users > deal with programming (for example, providing vector operators > that are closer to actual mathematical notation), in general it > appears that Fortran-88 is a harder language to use. I believe > that ease of use should be high on the priority list of the > standard framers - is it? I disagree that f88 is going to be harder to learn to use. Students do not need to know how to write programs with accept varying numbers of arguments and keyword parameter passing. But having a LIBRARY which employs such features makes their life MUCH simpler. Part-time programmers get leverage from the features which are "esoteric". It is precisely these features which will make it possible for "full time" programmers to build more general tools. I don't understand your complaint(s) about modified loop constructs. Is do i = 1, n stuff end do Hard to understand ? To use ? Or do .... if (condition) exit end do This construct was, in fact, endorsed by some papers in SIGPLAN notices as being the easiest for students to use correctly the first time. While overloading, and generic math is painful for compiler writers (and may be hard for "part time programmers" to appreciate) consider how much easier life is when one doesn't have to worry about the precision of a routine ? Keith H. Bierman It's Not My Fault ---- I Voted for Bill & Opus