Roger Glover wrote:
(snip)
> All of these are cases of expert Fortran programmers who
> now write floating-point, computationally-intensive code in
> C++. And why? Because Fortran does not provide them with
> the tools they need to write the kinds of codes they are
> being called upon to write.
>
I am not sure of the validity of this statement. I am now inclined
to think that the ignorance of the existence of Fortran 90 (and now
F95) and of its capabilities are the main reason of the change. When
I have asked to programmers that abandoned Fortran in profit of
C/C++ why they have make the change, the Fortran they are referring
is invariably F77. In the mind of many people, the Fortran language
is F77 . Check at the comp.lang.fortran newsgroup and you will see
that many people are still using F77 despite of the considerable
advantages of F90. This is very disappointing.
In the four examples cited (high energy physics, seismic data analysis,
radar signature and financial modelling), it is probable that the
programmers have made the comparison between F77 and C++, and the choice
was obvious.
If we want that our favorite language survives, we must do some PR
and show that the evolution of Fortran goes far beyond F77.
Regards,
Jean Vezina
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