ed298-ak@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache) (06/02/87)
In article <8253@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: (Much deleted) > >They'll pick up the F88 quick enough when it starts to creep into >their environment, ......................... (Much deleted) I am not very optimistic about getting people to use structured constructs once they have spent many years not using them. Our classes already have some problems getting BASIC students to learn to use Pascal properly, and we have a real problem with students trying to use a Pascal style in "C". In my opinion the conversion the other way is trivial. Once someone learns an F88 style of FORTRAN, patching one's code to run under F77 is simple (and we provide instructions on how to it this). Unfortunately, running F77 programs on F88 will be probably simpler since the standards will be as upwardly compatible as possible. While this compatiblity is designed to port programs between the two standards, it has the unpleasent side effect of permiting programmers to be ported between the two standards without any retraining. I hate to say it, but there are FORTRAN programmers out there that still limit themselves to the 66 standard. Unless we force people to invest some time into structured programming, they will never be able to compare the two styles, and thus will never see the benefits that we see as obvious. While our teaching of a non-standard FORTRAN might seem cruel at first, in the end the student is far more open and well rounded as to what computer programming is all about. Edouard Lagache School of Education U.C. Berkeley lagache@violet.berkeley.edu