NOT Educating FORTRAN programmers to use C

[Kurt Krueger]

In article <1024 at sdrc.UUCP> spabdul at sdrc.UUCP (abdul shammaa) writes:

> How do you convince your managment that it's time to throw away the
> ancient FORTRAN 4 when there are thousands and thousands of lines of that
> crap :-( ?! To make matters worse, most to the developers are those who
> fear "C" or just don't want to change.  I am getting sick and tired of
> looking at variable names that look like: I1, I2, KK, IKK, RR etc.. and
> at GOTO statments that you have to use in FORTRAN 4.  You may be asking
> why FORTRAN 4? Well, because as the upper managment puts it "Our software
> has to run on so many hardware platforms".  That's true, BUT, I don't
> believe that that reason should keep up in the middle ages of software
> technology.

>  ...   Mind you these are CAE applications which are
> complex by nature.  So one need not the added burden and limitations of
> the programming language itself.


That is probably the BEST argument to keep the implementation in Fortran.
CAE applications are complex and tend to require a lot of the processor.  With
the exception of UNIX, you tend to get the best performance with the Fortran
compiler.  Your management is no dummy. I know you don't like this, but these
are current time facts of life.

Most of your definition of 'crap' in Fortran is the style of the programmer.
I can generate 4x that type of 'crap' in C.  Fortunately, the SCIENCE of
computer programming was upon us before C became popular, it was entirely an
ART when Fortran came about.  Thus 'crap' was acceptable in Fortran 4, but not
so in C.  It is not acceptable in f77 (but that doesn't stop anyone).

It might enlighten you to read a book by Kernighan (THE K in K&R) and Plauger
called "The Elements of Programming Style".  It's about (GASP!) Fortran.
Shows the difference between good Fortran and 'crap'. Too late for the ignorant
type who used 200+ GOTO's.  If the dyed-in-the-wool Fortran programmers in
you organization haven't read it, they should.

I'm  still a firm believer that if you want performance on multiple
platforms, Fortran (but f77 PLEASE!) is still the way to go.  Fortran
does some things real nice (try passing a variable dimensioned 3-d
array into a C function - UGH!, or dealing with COMPLEX variables),
and some things are ugly (f77 does not support dynamic memory
allocation or pointers, but all argument passing is by pointers, and it does
support pointers to functions (via EXTERNAL)).  The optimizers are generally
VERY good at turning array reference operations into the equivalent C pointer
reference.

This argument will weaken as years go by, but it could very well be a
different language than C that we will be discussing.  I guarantee that
Fortran will still be the 'other' language discussed.

One last question  - are you sure that you don't fear Fortran and don't want
to change?

(My credentials - 15 years Fortran on CDC equipment (excellent Fortran, no C)
 3 years C on Unix.  Language of choice - DEPENDS ON THE APPLICATION.  When
 it's a push, I'll use C.  If it's bsd Unix, I do my best to avoid f77)

_______________________________________________________________________________

--- Lively discussion welcomed, personal attacks to /dev/null