chris@spock (Chris Ott) (09/17/88)
After seeing all of this Fortran vs C discussion, I need to add my
two cents.
When I am forced to learn something new, I generally give a lot of
resistance. This is true of just about everyone. In fact, the reason that
most people in this newsgroup who assert the superiority of Fortran are
probably doing so because they are used it. They don't want to take the
necessary time to _really_ learn C. Hey, I know how you feel. I was the
same way when I started learning UNIX (after being used to AOS/VS).
I hated UNIX with a passion. Now that I've used it for a while, I think
it's a pretty decent operating system.
I used to program in Fortran. When I started learning C, I had 3 or
4 years of Fortran experience under my belt. It was hard at first, but I
was determined to learn C, no matter what. (Gee, this is beginning to
sound like some religious fanatic who's about to "see the light" :-) )
Now, I will _never_ go back to Fortran, unless some higher power
intervenes. Is there anyone out there who can claim that they learned
Fortran _after_ knowing C well and will never go back to C?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Ott
Computational Fluid Mechanics Lab Just say "Whoa!!" and
University of Arizona vote for Randee!!
Internet: chris@spock.ame.arizona.edu
UUCP: {allegra,cmcl2,hao!noao}!arizona!amethyst!spock!chris
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------jerry@violet.berkeley.edu ( Jerry Berkman ) (09/17/88)
In article <822@amethyst.ma.arizona.edu> chris@spock (Chris Ott) writes: > >In fact, the reason that >most people in this newsgroup who assert the superiority of Fortran are >probably doing so because they are used it. They don't want to take the >necessary time to _really_ learn C. > >It was hard at first, but I >was determined to learn C, no matter what. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chris Ott I admit it, I'm lazy. I have been maintaining programs written in C for at least 5 years. If I have any choice, I'd rather use FORTRAN. I'm currently rewriting a large C program in FORTRAN, and it is a relief to concentrate on the problem being solved rather than chasing through include files trying to find out what a declaration means, or trying to remember bizarre rules to figure out what a statement actually does. And I don't believe C is really "terse". Some statements are, e.g. "i++" is terser than the FORTRAN equivalent. But what about exponentiation, e.g. C's "pow(x,(double)i);" vs. FORTRAN's "x**i". And what about I/O: e.g., what is the terse C equivalent to "print *, x" especially if "x" is an array. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. I prefer FORTRAN and nothing you post will change my mind. I once shared an office with someone who used APL; he couldn't understand why anyone would use any other language for any program. Ditto, one of my managers thought lisp was the answer to ours prayers. And then there was the manager who said use PL/1. Now the C proponents. Just for the record, since some people posting to this group seem to feel dynamic memory allocation from FORTRAN is impossible, I have used dynamic memory allocation from FORTRAN on CDC, IBM, VAX UNIX, and VAX VMS systems. It is not in the FORTRAN standard, but is fairly common practice for large programs. Also for the record, one posting claimed UNIX f77 doesn't have the include statement: it does, at least in BSD UNIX. - Jerry Berkman Computing Services, U.C. Berkeley jerry@violet.berkeley.edu