OK I've read the article, but I don't find it "bashing."
The auther doesn't mention modern Fortran and doesn't state
what the "many hindrances" of Fortran are, but neither does he
mention particulars of any other language (except in passing
examples, which are all bad coding in C). What he says is
"There are characteristics of good coding that transcend all
programming languages" (the second page has nothing but that
statement written on it) and goes on to list some generic
advice. It seems to me that Fortran is brought up as the
perceived bad language only to point out that that perception
doesn't matter (we should be writing good code in any language
anyways).
It would have been better if the word "Fortran" throughout the
article were written "FORTRAN" because its usage clearly refers to
that historic or mythical language. (The Real Programmer who
wrote FORTRAN in any language will surely not accept Fortran 90
as true FORTRAN!) I can't tell if the chosen capitalization was
intentional or by some editorial choice, but I suspect the latter
because although the title printed on the page reads "FORTRAN",
the jounal web page lists it with "Fortran"; they don't seem to be
too keen on the difference...
--
Yasuki Arasaki
[log in to unmask]
|