So-Called Real Programmers and FORTRAN

From: Douglas H. Quebbeman <dquebbeman_at_acm.org>
Date: Tue May 7 06:19:57 2002

> >> From: Allison [mailto:ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net]
> >> I disagree. The UCSD version was an excellent teaching tool but
> >> slower than sludge due to the P-code thing. Later implementations
> >> namely JRT and Borland were very useful tools.
> >
> >I'm also of that opinion. I like Pascal, and Modula, and Oberon...
> >Chris
>
> I went from HP3000 BASIC to UCSD Pascal. I liked it. In retrospect,
> the things that suck about Pascal are the argument passing mechanism
> and strings. C is better essentially because it lets you manage
> memory directly, without predefined string sizes. And it lets you
> handle the guts.

My only problem with Pascal argument passing was the lack of
support for missing arcguments (or short lists as some call them).
Modula-2 corrected that omission.
 
> But I am not a C programmer in general (except when programming
> microcontrollers in RT applications); I write mostly scientific numerical
> (portable) code, and Matlab and FORTRAN rule in that realm. Yes, FORTRAN. :-)
> My stuff runs under Solaris, AIX, Linux, HPUX, and Win32, using gcc/g77,
> HP f77, Sun fortran, xlf.

Been working on a utility in F77 myself, just recently...

-dq
Received on Tue May 07 2002 - 06:19:57 BST