At 15:42 03-12-97 -0800, you wrote:
>On Thu, 4 Dec 1997, Len Makin, CSIRO Maths & Info Sci, Melbourne. wrote:
>
>> I fully agree. It's a bit like IMPLICIT NONE. When giving courses on F90,
>> I recommend both
>> - every program unit contains IMPLICIT NONE
>> - every module starts with PRIVATE
>> as a convention/programming style. Pity these two are not defaults.
>> I'd like to be able to say "Not just a good idea - it's the LAW!" ;-)
>
>Let me disagree with this widespread point of view.
>Fortran is great because it leaves you freedom. If you want to program
>safely, nobody can stop you; but I like to be left the choice to myself.
>Not everybody writes huge programs all the time: I am using Fortran
>every day, but most of the time to write small programs (I use it very
>often instead of a pocket calculator or of a shell script). In these
>cases I am not willing to waste my time declaring all variables,
>including the index of the do-loop which sometimes constitutes my whole
>program.
>The implicit type convention is extremely useful for this kind of "scrap
>paper" calculations. When I have to write a "serious" program then
>things are different, and I take seriously IMPLICIT NONE, indentation,
>comments, etc. But please, forget unnecessary constraints and especially
>the LAWs: we are all adults, not schoolchildren.
Let me put my bit in the bin too:
I agree with Len Makin. I teach Fortran and urge everybody to declare
all objects explicitly.
I regret that in Fortran this is not compulsory like in C or Pascal.
We are adults but any help to prevent errors is welcome.
>
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Best Greetings,
Jan van Oosterwijk
Computing Centre
Delft University of Technology
P.O. Box 354
2600 AJ Delft
Netherlands
Phone: +31 15 278 50 17
Fax: +31 15 278 37 87
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