I have just received a copy of Fortran Forum and had a few comments
to make regarding the artticle
why don't academic snobs teach fortran
there were a number of issues raised by
a. van snyder
b. lawrie schonfelder
c. robert corbett
reasons why academics dont...
van snyder and lawrie schonfelder
1. too many restrictions that aren't explained...
2. lack of powerful features in f90 that have been in other languages
for many years
answer 1
it is possible to identify a reasonable working subset
that will solve a quite wide range of numeric problems.
the similarity of f and elf is an encouraging sign.
answer 2
there are a lot of very powerful features in f90.
dynamic allocation
whole array processing
pointers
modules
==========
robert corbett
lack of knowledge/ignorance
this unfortunately is very true. however i think we as
a f90 community have to try to raise the profile
and correct misconceptions.
fortran was born in the 50's. most people see the
language in terms of that 'old' language.
all we can do here is to bring to people'e attention
what f90 has to offer.
==========
lawrie schonfelder
scientists and engineers not teaching fortran.
i agree. however we can still make progress
in this area. i recently took over a first
year programming course for our mechanical
engineering department and have got them to
agree that i teach f90.
one of the department had eventually got hold of
a fortran 90 compiler and has moved back to fortran
(i.e. f90) from c because of the modern features
in the language.
our physics department made the move 3 years ago.
i am helping out with the demonstrating. we have
approx 80 keen 1st year students who are very positive
about f90 and feel that their investment is worthwhile.
==========
i would be very interested in hearing about the take
up elsewhere. are logs kept of the access to the freely
available material? this might shed a bit more light
on current usage.
also from the compiler writers. i assume that people
are still buying f77, but all of the enquiries now
at king's are f90 based. is this trend holding with
compiler sales?
ian chivers
computer centre
king's college london
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