Richard Maine wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2004, at 5:41 PM, Jing Guo wrote:
>
>> A friend of mine pointed me to the following website:
>>
>> "PETITION TO RETIRE FORTRAN"
>> I wonder what people on this list think about those statements.
>
>
> I mostly think it is a bunch of uninformed whining not worth
> replying to in detail... so I won't.  As someone else said, what
> does "retire Fortran" mean?  Particularly as it is allegedly
> addressed at J3.  Is J3 supposed to send a goon squad after everyone
> that continues using the language?

What if the petition was meant to retire FORTRAN features
from Fortran 2003 or later?  Would that make any difference?
Anyway, that was how I interperate the petition by reading
the statements.

>
> And whatever it means, what purpose would this allegedly achieve?
> Stopping other people from getting work done?

I can see how certain implementation of "retiring FORTRAN"
may stop many people's work.  Other implementations may not.
For instance, isn't F another attempt to "retiring FORTRAN",
in a less dramatic way?

 > I see nobody forcing
> the author to use Fortran.

As far as I know, some of those who signed the petition are
FORTRAN/Fortran programmers.  They probably favor Fortran 90
and later much more than the traditional FORTRAN, except its
troublesome growning complexity.

 > I'm always very leery of people who go
> on crusades whose sole purpose is to force other people to do or
> not do something that has no obvious effect on the crusader... but
> I veer dangerously close to current US political issues here.  :-(
>
> No, I see nothing here worth discussing.  My disagreements with the
> material aside, this is nothing put a publicly posted whine.

I certainly agree it is whining.  But people do whining when
they get headacke.  :-)

 > And I note
> that it has no options for discussion or anything - just sign your
> name or not.  If the author actually thinks this has any constructive
> use, then I'd say he is as misinformed about matters other than just
> Fortran.

What I can tell is, instead of continuing on the great FORTRAN
vs. C debate, we are seeing more and more FORTRAN vs. Fortran
90/95 conflicts between FORTRAN and Fortran 90/95 developers (I
know Fortran 90/95 includes FORTRAN, but you know what I mean).
For example, a piece of modernized Fortran 90 software can be
quickly corrupted or bottlenecked by implementations using bad
FORTRAN features.

Jing

>
> --
> Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
> [log in to unmask]       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
>                              |        -- Mark Twain
>

--
** Any opinion expressed is my own and not that of NASA. **
________________________________ _-__-_-_ _-___--- _____________________
Jing Guo, [log in to unmask], (301)614-6172(o), (301)614-6297(fx)
Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Code 900.3, NASA/GSFC
Greenbelt, MD 20771