mlj8e@dale.acc.Virginia.EDU (Michael L. Johnson) (04/16/88)
In a recent article the question was ask if anyone had compared a SUN-3 and SUN-4 for scientific calculations. Well after checking the SUN's and several other machines I decided to purchase a RISC machine, but not the SUN-4. The machine I picked is the Silicon Graphics 4D/70. The reason that I picked this machine is that when I tested them with my scientific programs I discovered that the FORTRAN compiler on the 4D/70 generated fewer errors. It should be noted that the programs which I tested all run perfectly on our VAX-VMS machines and on out PDP-11 RT-11 machines. With one 27,000 line program the Silicon Graphics machine claimed that two statements were out of order and the SUN machine generated numerous errors in translating from VMS FORTRAN to UNIX FORTRAN. The net result was that I purchased the machine with the better FORTRAN compiler. I know that I should be using a more modern language, but I would like to state that I have a B.S. in computer Science and about 20 years experience in programming computers, and I have programmed in several more modern languages, like PL/1, C and PASCAL as well as a number of languages that most of you have never heard of like FOCAL and SAIL. The bottom line is that I use FORTRAN because I like it better than any other language that I have ever used. Incidently, FORTRAN was not the first language that I learned, first I learned ALGOL, then PDP-5 assembler, then FOCAL, then CDC-3300 assembler, and then FORTRAN. (804)-924-2496 Michael L. Johnson mlj8e@virginia.EDU Pharmacology Dept. uunet!virginia!mlj8e Box 448; Univ. of Va. mlj8e@virginia.BITNET Charlottesville, Va. 22908