From: "Tobias Burnus" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, 23 August 2010 5:33 PM
> With the same argument, one should not have started Fortran 90 or moved
> to 95 as a large number of compilers stayed with Fortran 77.
That sentence make sense. In any case,
even if we assume you meant "compiler writers" instead of "compilers",
your conclusion does't follow.
By 1990, most compilers satisfied the F77 standard.
> And even
> today, many users only use Fortran compilers for old Fortran 77 programs
> or for Fortran 90/95 programs. The latter also because the developers
> restricted themselves to those features all compiler supported. However,
> I see a change: More and more Fortran 2003 features are used - some
> deliberately and some (like non-integer initialization expressions) more
> accidentally. I think that's driven in part by the market concentration
> in terms of hardware (thus effectively, fewer compilers need to be
> supported) but also by the availability of g95/gfortran which invalidate
> excuses such as that for one platform no newer compiler exists or that
> is to expensive.
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