On Mar 4, 2005, at 6:39 AM, Orville E. Wheeler wrote:
> I'm tight fisted so I still have Microsoft Powerstation 90
There is no such thing. I suspect you mean Powerstation 4.0.
> It, of course, has gone through several vendors
If you do mean Powerstation 4.0, then this is not true, although it is
a widely repeated error. The Powerstation 4.0 product was just
discontinued - period. Microsoft made a recommendation about a compiler
to use as a replacement, but that was a completely different compiler
from a completely different development line. No, Microsoft did not
sell the compiler to Digital; that statement has often been repeated,
but is simply false. The developers from Digital (including some who I
know personally - so I'm not just depending on some "official company
line") make this quite clear and explicit.
> It's a perfectly good compiler with a good interface ...
Our judgments differ there. I never could get any of my code running on
it. I worked around a large number of internal compiler errors (even on
simple f77-ish things) and eventually managed to make an executable...
that didn't work correctly. Somewhere around there, I gave up on it, as
other compilers for the platform were working fine for me.
On fairly rare occasion, I still run into people using that compiler.
If they are asking for my help with it, I tend to tell them that I've
already invested more than enough of my time fighting with it to pay
for many compiler licenses, and that I decline to spend more such time.
It is pretty close to the bottom on my personal list of compilers that
I've had experience with. I could probably name one from a decade or so
ago that was lower on the list (but it was never a significant
commercial success and I haven't run into people using it).
On John's original question...
I waffle about the same question myself. I stuck to f90 for a long
time. I still do know some people who at least have f90 compilers
installed. One of the users I support here has an old version of PGI's
f90 compiler that doesn't do f95. But then he also has other compilers
on the system. The PGI compiler was purchased for a particular
application (which needed both f90 and Cray pointers - a combination
that limited the available choices - the PGI compiler was specifically
listed as supported by the application) and is not the "usual" compiler
used on the system. (That's part of why we haven't purchased upgrades
for it - the one target application still works fine).
I also recently ran into someone using V 1.0 of Sun's f90 compiler.
This came up for reasons unrelated to f95, but I do know that the
compiler was f90-only (I forget the exact dates, but it probably
pre-dated the f95 standard even being released). Fortunately, the user
found that current compiler versions were also available to him once he
asked in more depth (V 1.0 would not have worked for my application).
But for new applications, I personally think I'd go ahead with f95
constructs now, even for code to be widely distributed. I do still
consider it a close call; I'd have given a different answer not to
awfully long ago.
--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
[log in to unmask] | experience comes from bad judgment.
| -- Mark Twain
|