Re: what to buy now?

On 2007-02-22 09:27:29 -0400, "Beliavsky" <beliavsky@xxxxxxx> said:

On Feb 22, 3:59 am, "Terence" <tbwri...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The problem is that if you buy a commercial Fortran compiler it will
work (hopefully) until you no longer can buy a computer with, as O/S,
the Microsoft Windows software that the compiler (that you paid for,
and paid maintenance for) will work on.
The compiler might even need more expensive stuff like MS C++
compilers and .NET and Visual Studio.

For example, I use CVF 6.0 on Microsoft 98 and 2000 systems which are
now not supported by Microsoft.
Even though I bought the newer Intel 9.1, I don't use it because I
understand CVF by now and don't understand the Intel version.

I suggest you acquire and support with comments (and possible bug
reports) one of the free Fortran compilers available.
This is the only way Fortran programmers can hope to have any future.
And especially if you are in the private sector.
Only very very large companies (Nuclear? Aerospace? Power?) can afford
this merry-go-round.

I agree that one should try the free Fortran 95 compilers, gfortran
and g95. In fact I recommend trying both, because g95 supports the
entire Fortran 95 standard (gfortran is almost there), whereas
gfortran is faster and catches some errors in non-standard programs
that g95 does not.

If you used "afford" in the monetary sense, I disagree. I work for a
financial company with about half a dozen researchers where the annual
amount spent on software and data is certainly > $100K and maybe >
$1000K. A perpetual license for a commercial Fortran compiler costs
about $1K -- a blip in comparison. Companies with engineers spend a
lot of money on licenses for Matlab and its toolboxes, and if you want
to create a stand-alone program, buying the Matlab compiler is a big
expense.

If you convert the $1K into fully costed person-days and ask about the
the time saving of the commercial product it becomes much clearer.

By the end of the week you will be ahead! In some places it only has
to arrive on Wednesday. This ignores the issue of all the fuss needed
to get the payment authorized. But then there are lots of environments
where the paperwork is the major hurdle.

Commercial compilers such as Intel Visual Fortran and Lahey/Fujitsu
let one write GUI programs within Fortran. The free compilers produce
console programs or DLLs.


.

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