Re: Praise for Gfortran (finally)

On Sep 24, 12:11 pm, Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Glos...@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
Thank you for contradicting Steven Bosscher's claim innews:5b3f0a83-bc01-429b-991a-d42a44ed42c7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
that people who have not studied the principles of compilers develop a
good compiler

You mean that people at Intel, Pathscale, NAG, Absoft, Sun, Portland
Group, IBM etc. have not "not studied the principles of compilers
develop a good compiler"? Or how should I interpret this? I would
claim that be larger problem is the relatively smaller user base
(compared with C), which was also spread over a large number of
Fortran compilers; having new features does also not help to reduce
the number of bugs bugs. I would also claim that Fortran is complex
enough to overlook something when implementing something new.

For gfortran I see the number of Fortran 95 bugs constantly decreasing
(judging from the bug reports), but it will of cause never be bugfree
and there are enough possibilities for bugs when Fortran 2003/2008
features get implemented.


Writing compilers without reading about established techniques on how
to do so is not effective. I am aware of someone who had graduated in
computer science who has tried to write a compiler without consulting
the literature, and he did not do well.

I want to point out that there are several GCC developers which have
studied computer science and do compiler development for living; I
pretty sure that a large number of them knows compiler development
literature. That number of people knowing compiler literature inside
out might be less in gfortran than in other parts of GCC, but is also
not zero. I think your view it too much black and white, while
reality is different shades of grey.


The aforementioned hero of language formalism and Fortran said that
FORTRAN I was good for the beginning of high-level programming but
that it should not be kept as a basis for better languages.

As Fortran is now around for 50 years and still moderately widely
used, contrary to some other languages, what does this proof?

Tobias
.

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