Mathematical expression syntax (was: C vs. Fortran)

[Barnacle Wes]

In article <895 at garth.UUCP>, walter at garth.UUCP (Walter Bays) writes:
> I think not.  Keep the clearer, more maintainable code.  Take one
> year's maintenance on the 780 and buy a new workstation to replace it.
> (It doesn't even have to be ours, though of course that's preferable
> :-)  Then you get run times better than 3:1, and continue saving on
> both hardare and software maintenance.

In general, I agree with you, but in this case, the speed was really
needed.  The hardware was firmly fixed - this was a government contract,
and the computer was GFE - Government Furnished Equipment.  End of
argument about what to run it on.

The CPU simulator was just a small part of a simulator for a particular
type of powerful rocket with a very accurate guidance system (you can
guess all you want what it REALLY was :-), and the rest of the
simulation was written by physicists who readily admitted they were not
good programmers.  The overall simulation times were in the neighborhood
of 100:1 to 250:1.  When it takes 5 hours to simulate a 30-minute
flight, every little bit of speed helps.  It would not do to have the
CPU simulator making it 3 or 4 times slower yet!  The whole project
would have been much better in the long run if they had added one good
Fortran programmer to the physical body simulator - perhaps making it 2
or 3 times faster.

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