Drew McCormack wrote:

several snips here and there.  I don't think that Drew and I in
disagreement, we just have different slants on things.

> On Jul 14, 2004, at 10:15 AM, Paddy O'Brien wrote:
>
>> Drew McCormack wrote:
>>
>>>
>> [snips of what Bill Long and Keith Bierman wrote]
>>
>>> I agree with this. There is no doubt Fortran code can be made faster,
>>> easier.
>>>
>> And as has been said several times in this thread, with a smaller and
>> easier learning curve.
>
> Agreed. I wouldn't trust C++ with a new developer. Fortran is much
> simpler, and less prone to error. (Note that I don't think this has to
> do with OO programming in general, just C++. Languages like Java are OO
> and easy to use, in my view.)
>

I don't trust anything with a new developer.  I mentioned that we employ
young electrical engineering graduates for their work experience.  What
they program for us has definitely to be be reviewed by me or my
colleague -- we sort of trust each other, but we also review each others
code :-)

>>
>>> One thing which I haven't seen brought up, which is in favor of higher
>>> level languages like C++ and Java, is algorithmic performance
>>
>>
>> I would never have classed these as "higher level".
>
> Depends on your definition of course. But they allow for higher level
> abstractions, so I consider them higher level.
>

Yes, true.  My abstraction is for numerical codes, massive integrations
of generator and control systems characteristics.  I have found that
TYPE or Digital STRUCTURES often inhibit optimisation, so I see no
reason for OO to "un-inhibit".  I actually found that by removing
Digital structures from some eigen analysis I was able to get a twofold
speed-up.  O.k., it may be a defect of the compiler now, and may be
enhanced, but I suspect that it is the because the variables used in the
eigen analysis are no longer contiguous in a TYPE (or Digital
STRUCTURE). The contiguous nature of arrays is really what the BLAS are
based on and where Jack Dongerra found that loop unrolling enhanced
performance.  My users want to run dynamic and transient stability
studies as fast as possible.

[Rest snipped.]

BTW, Drew, although I seem to be spending a lot of time disagreeing, I
believe these discussions have merit to give us better understanding of
each others approach to problem solving.  I have enjoyed reading your
comments on c.l.f and here on the F90 mailing list.

Regards, Paddy



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