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<p class="MsoNormal">Minor point of pedagogy from my place in the "learned FORTRAN 77 in 1990" crowd: your instructor's options would have been:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">standard FORTRAN 77<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">vendor-specific dialect of FORTRAN (VAX or otherwise)<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">maybe a pre-release of FORTRAN 90? Wasn't released and standardized until 1991-92.<o:p></o:p></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Never mind the availability of texts for same.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Beowulf <beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org><br>
<b>Date: </b>Monday, October 19, 2020 at 12:06 PM<br>
<b>To: </b>beowulf@beowulf.org <beowulf@beowulf.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [Beowulf] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Re: Spark, Julia, OpenMPI etc. - all in one place</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><br>
On 10/19/20 10:28 AM, Douglas Eadline wrote:<br>
> --snip--<br>
><br>
>> Unfortunately the presumption seems to be that the old is deficient<br>
>> because it is old, and "my generation†didn't invent it (which is<br>
>> clearly perverse; I see no rush to replace English, French, … which are<br>
>> all older than any of our programming languages, and which adapt, as do<br>
>> our programming languages).<br>
>><br>
> I think this has a lot to do with the Fortran situation. In these "modern"<br>
> times, software seems to have gone from "releases" to a "sliding<br>
> constant release" cycle and anything not released in the past few<br>
> months is "old."<br>
><br>
> How many people here will wait a 2-6 months before installing<br>
> a "new version" of some package in production to make sure there<br>
> are no major issues. And of course keep older version options<br>
> with software modules. Perhaps because I've been at this a while,<br>
> I have a let it "mellow a bit" approach to shinny new software.<br>
><br>
> I find it odd that Fortran gets placed in the "old software box"<br>
> because it works while new languages with their constant feature<br>
> churn and versions break dependency trees all over the place,<br>
> and somehow that is good thing. Now get off my lawn.<br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Doug<br>
><br>
Now we're starting to veer of course a little here, but what the hell...<br>
<br>
I think that one of the problems with Fortran is a complete<br>
misunderstanding of it's purpose. People are always shocked when I tell<br>
them the scientists I support are "still" using Fortran. Many people<br>
think that C and C++ replaced Fortran, but that is not true. C was<br>
designed to do low-level programming for tasks like writing operating<br>
systems, and C++ is just an extension of the C language to support<br>
Object-Oriented Programming. Both C and C++ are lower-level and more<br>
general purpose than Fortran.<br>
<br>
Fortran is a domain-specific language, meaning it was meant for a<br>
special purpose, which in this case is doing mathematical operations,<br>
and it's very good for those sorts of things. It's trivial to create<br>
multidimensional arrays in Fortran, which is useful for many math<br>
operations, but C doesn't even support anything beyond 1D arrays. Sure<br>
you can mimic multidimensional arrays by keeping track of stride length,<br>
etc., but that's a lot of work, and I'm betting that's work a lot of<br>
scientists would rather not do. That's just one example of Fortran being<br>
friendlier for science. I'm sure there are other examples, but I'm not a<br>
programmer, and definitely NOT a Fortran programmer.<br>
<br>
I think the main reason most people look at Fortran as an old and<br>
outdated language is because it stuck to the "punch card" formatting<br>
long after punch cards and punch card readers disappeared, but I'm not<br>
sure who to blame for that. Do I blame my freshman "Programming for<br>
Engineers" instructor who taught me Fortran 77 in 1991, or do I blame<br>
whoever maintains the Fortran standard for not updating it before then?<br>
(I honestly don't know what the latest version of Fortran was in the<br>
fall of 1991).<br>
<br>
Prentice<br>
<br>
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