Dear Editors,
I would like to suggest a follow-up to the article:
"Pioneers of the 'Fortran' Programming Language"
by Steve Lohr (June 13th, Technology section) to correct the misconceptions
about Fortran that it leaves the reader with.
Although the article covers the early beginnings of Fortran well, it fails
to even mention the fact that Fortran has been revised and modernized
several times since its inception and is very widely used among numerical
programmers (number crunchers). In fact, the article does great injustice to
the Fortran ISO Committees (J3, http://www.j3-fortran.org, and WG5,
http://www.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/), who have done a lot to create a very robust,
efficient and modern language, by saying:
"Today, Fortran is often mentioned wistfully by computer scientists and
veteran programmers as the first programming language they learned but then
abandoned as newer languages were developed for new kinds of computing."
As a hard-core Fortran user, I can vowel that this is incorrect, or better
said, the reason some computer scientists do not favor Fortran are different
from the ones given---mostly lack of knowledge and the preponderance of C++
in American university education...and maybe articles like this one.
Thank you,
Aleksandar
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Aleksandar Donev
http://www.pa.msu.edu/~donev/
[log in to unmask]
(517) 432-6770
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1116
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