Re: Fortran bashing in the MATLAB newsgroup

On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:12:40 GMT, James Tursa <aclassyguywithaknotac@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
FYI, here are some comments from the MATLAB newsgroup about Fortran:

(begin quote)

I see Fortran as a language that's continually changing to
try to keep up with more modern languages.

There is one sole reason for teaching (and learning) Fortran
these days: To be able to read and understand old code, in
order to port the algoprithms to some other language.
The fortran language as such is obsolete.

The die-hards
always claim that Fortran is fast because its simplicity
makes it easier for compilers to optimise (undoutedly true
for Fortran 66 constructs).

Not quite true. The reason Fortran is fast is that it
lacks dynamic memory management (that was added in
fortran 90 or 95, a mere 15 years ago). Everything is
easy once the memory maps are fixed at compile time.

And then in the next breath
they point out all the new features added to the latest
(77, 90, 95, ...) version that have added all the
flexibility of newer languages and are clearly are no
easier to optimise than any other language.

Sure. Selective memory must be most convenient.
I wish I had that, too...

As for optimizations, I've played a bit with
template metaprogramming in C++ for some time now,
and it seems to be one serious beast. Templates
allow the programmer to code readable code, at the
same time it allows the compiler to do some
serious optimization.

The newer
incantations of Fortran just allow old code to persist (and
fester, undocumented and unmaintainable).

Most certainly agreed!

Disagree. There are many quantum chemistry codes that are still written
in f77. They are still in wide use. They are maintained and they
continue to have new features added to them. Some like Gaussian03, soon
I think to be Gaussian08 are sold for reasonably high cost. I think the
general idea is that since they are already very large and in good f77
code, there is no point in adding f90, f95 coding features when the
compliler could perhaps not handle them. This was true while g77 was the
norm for a free compiler on linux, but of course is less true for
gfortran.

Brian.

(end quote)

I've got my own ideas about what modern Fortran is good for and why I
still use it. I also have my own ideas about why it is fast for
certain tasks.

Before I give my own 2 cent reply to the other neswgroup, I was
wondering if the experts out there had any comments they wish to
contribute about what modern Fortran is good for, why they still use
it for new projects vs C or C++ or Java, etc., or any other related
comments. Thanks.

James Tursa



--
Brian Salter-Duke Melbourne, Australia
My real address is b_duke(AT)bigpond(DOT)net(DOT)au
Use this for reply or followup
.

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