Educating FORTRAN programmers to use C

[Tom Neff]

[This is a .misc topic - followups directed there]

In article <167 at metapyr.UUCP> chris at metapyr.UUCP (Chris Collins) writes:
>My organization is in the midst of going thourgh just this painful process,
>of replacing our existing base of 500000 or so lines of Fortran with 
>C software.  The only way to convince management was to keep pointing out
>that the old software just can't be maintained or modified as easily as
>C software.  Eventually it will, if it hasn't already, hit them in the
>pocketbook.  

Why, pray tell, is C inherently more modifiable[!] or maintainable than
Fortran?

It seems to me that what hurts maintainability is lack of documentation
and lack of tools -- which can be equally true in either language.

It also seems to me that what hurts portability is building in all sorts
of messy assumptions about how one platform works for the sake of
'optimization' (perceived or real) so that you have to reinvent not
just the wheel, but the paddlewheel steamer, anywhere you move.  This
too can be done equally thoroughly in either language.

My shop has a zillion lines of Fortran, about 5% of which could
profitably be rewritten in a more system-y language like C if we ported
to a new platform, but the other 95% of which is doing its job just fine
in Fortran and would be well advised to stay that way.  (Fortran is
available now and ain't going away.)
-- 
To have a horror of the bourgeois   (\(    Tom Neff
is bourgeois. -- Jules Renard        )\)   tneff at bfmny0.UU.NET