Re: which language?

From: Dan Tex1 (dantex1_at_aol.com)
Date: 06/13/04 

Date: 13 Jun 2004 19:41:12 GMT

From: "Thomas G. Marshall"

>And, to reword my prior explanations a tad:
>
> If he's to spend 6 months learning the elements of
> programming, he might as well have 6 months added
> to his "career" in a language that is well regarded.
> Fortran (right or wrong) is not highly regarded any longer.

Well... if he needs 6 months to learn fortran... he should probably forget
about programming. I'm sure his strengths lie elsewhere.

For programmers writing codes that require a very good understanding of
engineering and physics principles... I'd say that fortran is still very
highly regarded. No other language available today has it's reputation for
creating clean, efficiant codes of such a nature. There's not even a close
second place that I am aware of.

I'd say that Fortran's lack of regard comes from programmers who don't ( and
aren't capable of ) writing such codes. The other reason is just plain
ignorance. Such ignorance is even taught in many CS schools nowadays.

Remember, most of the physics community didn't have high regard for Albert
Einstein and his ideas either ( for quite some time ). They couldn't believe
his ridiculous claims. To them, he was a loser. If they only knew what we
know now!!

Dan :-)

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