gil@icus.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (12/09/87)
In article <39rrk@byuvax.bitnet> rrk@byuvax.bitnet writes: [Discussion supporting VMS being the OS of the VAX deleted] > >And is Fortran the language of VMS? That's a similar question. No language >exists totally without influence from the other languages around it. You Agreed... >might say that everyone initially borrowed from Fortran or Cobol, but now >it only serves for compatibility. Standard fortran is missing lots of things >that it hasn't gotten around to borrowing from more advanced languages. See below... >Thanks partially to the primativeness of this standard Fortran, and the >beauty of VAX assembly, the average length of a program, except >for expression evaluation, may well be shorter in MACRO32. MACRO32 is the >only language found on all VMS VAX's. True, MACRO32 is found on ALL VMS machines. However, contrary to what you say here, the code for much of VMS is written in BLISS, which is closer to C (or, even more so, Atari Action! :-) ). You may even find it interesting to know that the error log report generator (ERF) is written in VAX FORTRAN. VAX FORTRAN is *NOT* the primitive FORTRAN that you learned in school. It contains STRUCTURES, DO .. ENDDO constructs (blocks), WHILE constructs, etc. Granted, its is definitely not a systems programming language (could you imagine an operating system written in FORTRAN???)...but... (read on) >Certainly Universities will cling >to Fortran. It was there when the professors went to school. I have never >been at a non-university site that had fortran. But nearly all the >non-university sites I've been at have VAX C. How many sites have you been at lately? Certainly there are PLENTY of shops, including ours, that use FORTRAN. Although the transition is being made to C, much of the graphics programming is being done in FORTRAN. DEC puts out a product called Spatial/II which contains a massive amount of FORTRAN code. This is only one example of such a large product developed using FORTRAN. >I learned Fortran in school >15 years ago, when it was a standard. But I abandoned it long before the >VAX hit the scene. The only people I know who tolerate fortran are Engineering >students. I've worked on 15 VAX CPU's in the past 7 years. The only one >with Fortran was the only University I worked at. There is too much existing code written in FORTRAN to abandon it, and too little money that clients are willing to spend to convert the code (yes, I said clients. A programming shop will seldom wish to spend their own money to convert code that works perfectly well). >Fortran and Cobol are a little like Latin and French. They are both very >established in certain environments, but I would never classify either one as >being "The Language". No, I agree whole-heartedly. But you cannot "abandon" a language because you see it as being archaic. I would love to sit down and convert all of the thousands of lines of FORTRAN code for our routing, graphics, and user interface libraries to C. However, our shop, as well as others, cannot justify the cost to the company or our clients to perform this conversion. Sure, you could use a conversion program to do it...but it would be uncommented, inefficient code. I, personally, can whip-out a FORTRAN program for 95% of all our applications in the same time that I could do it in C. I also don't have to worry about VAX C's ideosyncracies. I really liked C when I used it (wrote a lot of code in C, I thought it was great), but our shop doesn't use C. I never said that FORTRAN was THE language for anything...but I did say that it was used plenty in VMS applica- tions (and it is). One more thing to add to this lengthy conversation. You began with a discussion of MACRO32 programs being shorter than the equivalent FORTRAN code (with the exception of expression evaluation). I completely disagree with this (unless you are talking about COMPILED size). (Have you ever programmed in MACRO32?) To begin with, the source is considerably longer since operations a high-level language programmer sees as a "basic" function will ultimately be translated into one or (usually) more lines of assembler code. Secondly, should the source be shorter, the commenting it will take to render the code maintainable will make the source longer. I can say with reasonable confidence that where DEC used MACRO32 in writing VMS, they did so in order to optimize execution time and to access machine functions/areas that would otherwise be difficult with a high-level language. I haven't had the patience to sit and read the VMS source code fiche, but I am pretty sure that there's a good deal more BLISS than MACRO32. I didn't want to propagate this discussion since it goes back and fourth where people waste their time promoting their favorite languages. People do the damnest things with the most ancient of languages. DEC wrote an operating system around BASIC-plus (RSTS-E), many have been writen in assembler. There are applications and operating systems written in C. There are tons of folks who still use accounting packages written in COBOL with RPG reports, and think it is the greatest thing on Earth. Pick your favorite language and there are all sorts of plusses and minuses to them. The point I am trying to make in this is that FORTRAN, and all other languages, *DO* have a place. Although there are people who say C is THE language, there are folks who have perfectly legitimate reasons for saying that FORTRAN and COBOL are the best. There are supporters of fourth-generation languages who throw all of our programming languages in the trash. Its worthless to argue the merits/deficencies of programming languages. If my article hadn't been referenced, I would never had responded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gil Kloepfer, Jr. Senior Programmer ...!icus!gil Bowne Management Systems, Inc. Mineola, NY (add your favorite path) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) (12/22/87)
In article <167@icus.UUCP>, gil@icus.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes: > etc. Granted, it is definitely not a systems programming language (could > you imagine an operating system written in FORTRAN???)...but... (read on) I can not only imagine it, I've used one. Early releases of PR1MOS IV (the operating system of PR1ME 400 and 500 series machines) were indeed written mostly in FORTRAN. I can't think of anything good to say about the architecture, the operating system, or the utilities, but I don't think FORTRAN was to blame for that.
XRBEO@VPFVM.BITNET (Bruce O'Neel) (12/23/87)
Re: Fortran only for engineering people. I work on a manufacturing system which runs a company (Accounts Rec, accounts payable, general ledger and so on) which is almost all written in vax fortran. It is something on the order of over 100 megs of code. Many times, language choice isn't that important. bruce <xrbeo@vpfvm> on bitnet
zhao@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (T.C. Zhao) (12/23/87)
In article <488@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >In article <167@icus.UUCP>, gil@icus.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes: >> etc. Granted, it is definitely not a systems programming language (could >> you imagine an operating system written in FORTRAN???)...but... (read on) >I can not only imagine it, I've used one. Early releases of PR1MOS IV >(the operating system of PR1ME 400 and 500 series machines) were indeed >written mostly in FORTRAN. I can't think of anything good to say about >the architecture, the operating system, or the utilities, but I don't >think FORTRAN was to blame for that. I can't agree more. I believe CTSS on Cray was written mostly in Fortran. ---------------------------------------------- ARPA: zhao@csd4.milw.wisc.edu UUCP: ihnp4!uwmcsd1!csd4!zhao BITNET: zhao%csd4.milw.wisc.edu@wiscvm.bitnet
peter@keba.UUCP (Peter Scheer) (12/27/87)
In article <3982@uwmcsd1.UUCP> zhao@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (T.C. Zhao) writes: >In article <488@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >>In article <167@icus.UUCP>, gil@icus.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes: >>> etc. Granted, it is definitely not a systems programming language (could >>> you imagine an operating system written in FORTRAN???)...but... (read on) >>I can not only imagine it, I've used one. Early releases of PR1MOS IV >> [...] >I can't agree more. I believe CTSS on Cray was written mostly in Fortran. (b.t.w. this is my _first_ use of the "F"-key, so ...) Anybody remember MUSIC (McGill University System for Interactive Computing) ? J. Kepler University in Linz/Austria/Europe was one of the sites running it in Europe on an IBM 360/44 and i was the sys.admin - back in 1975. Lots of lots of FORTRAN. FORTRAN-Calls for EXCP (EXecute Channel Program) and SIO (Start I/O). (Yes, I know, the kernel was ASM - but everything else, from accounting to user-administration and even disk formatting was FORTRAN) /input long long ago ... /end *GO /save net --- Peter Scheer c/o KEBA, Gewerbehof C A-4040 Linz, Austria, Europe PHONE: ++43-732-230911-191 UUCP : ...!uunet!mcvax!tuvie!keba!peter