Looking over my recent long note about "academic history," it's now obvious to me that the REAL mistake in 1977 was keeping the name
Fortran. Just changing from FORTRAN to Fortran77 was not drastic enough.
Right then, everybody was hot on STRUCTURED PROGRAMMING. And FORTRAN (meaning F66) was EVERYWHERE and FORTRAN was UNSTRUCTURED (it
had a GO TO statement! Horrors!). Therefore, FORTRAN was BAD and it should have been "retired" then and there.
But instead, this X3J3 gang comes up with YET ANOTHER FORTRAN, well, "Fortran," and with those two funny 7's in the name, but
"obviously" just as BAD as ever! (No need to check and really find out.) And here are all these new STRUCTURED languages. Let's
start over with one of those, and be MODERN!
=
So, dear folks, we didn't change the name in 1977 (not enough, anyway), BUT it's not too late!
Petitions are the IN THING. (Didn't they get us a new Governor for California?) Let's petition NOW for a language with a NEW NAME.
Its definition shall be the current F2003 proposal except for the teensy paragraph that states the name of the language. (And tell
ISO, that was just a typo with no technical effect.)
Who has a web site handy?
= Loren P Meissner
PS: Maybe call the language Schwarzenegger? Do you think?
-----Original Message-----
From: Fortran 90 List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jing Guo
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 5:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Retire FORTRAN?!
A friend of mine pointed me to the following website:
"PETITION TO RETIRE FORTRAN"
http://www.fortranstatement.com
Being a long time Fortran developer for scientific computing, I
think those statements make a lot of sense, although I am not
sure I will sign the petition.
I wonder what people on this list think about those statements.
--
** 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
|