Fortran 2008 (was Re: New style DO syntax?)

Richard Maine wrote:

My personal opinion is that f2008 is being rushed too fast, but a delay
of 1000 years is probably more than I was thinking. :-) I do suspect
that full f2003 compilers will be out before the f2008 standard, but not
by as much as I'd like to see. It seems to me that the current schedule
allows zero opportunity for any actual experience with full-language
f2003 compilers to influence f2008. After all, the f2008 feature set
seems to be largely settled already, or at least enough so that changes
to it are likely to be resisted as being too late - but there are no
f2003 compilers yet.

I agree with Mr. Maine. A company can work on version 2 of a product
while putting the final touches on version 1, but final decisions about
version 2 should NOT be made until customers gain experience with
version 1 and can give feedback. Whether there should even be a version
2 should depend on the success of version 1 in the marketplace. Because
one can call any project a "success" by redefining "success", the
criteria for success should be defined beforehand.

One argument made for future Fortran standards is that "a language
either evolves or dies." I wonder about this. C is still one of the
most important and popular programming languages, and it's my
impression that the C99 standard has very little to do with this.

Most public domain Fortran code is still in FORTRAN -- modern Fortran
is underused. I think translating the important FORTRAN libraries to
Fortran 95 or 2003 could be an important service to the Fortran
community. Two people that have worked on this are Alan Miller
http://users.bigpond.net.au/amiller/ and John Burkardt
http://www.scs.fsu.edu/~burkardt/f_src/f_src.html . Burkardt quickly
fixes reported errors in his posted codes.

The Fortran 2003 book by Metcalf, Reid, and Cohen is good but perhaps
not suitable to beginning programmers. More books on Fortran 2003 are
needed IMO.

I think it is more important right now for Fortranners to use the
language that is available and discover its strengths and limitations,
before making the language even bigger.

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