Fortran faces extinction threats from C/C++ and Java
Fortran exists only on account of people over 40
Fortran's real appeal is its cultural continuity with
Gauss, Euler etc.
We have centuries of mathematical CULTURE (a term that
might make the barbarians on this board uncomfortable) that
has pretty much 'codified' i,j,k,l,m,n as integer
indices of summation.
Fortran was used for safety-critical code YEARS before
Programming was turned into something barbaric with
Pascal (yes, Pascal), and its UNSPEAKABLE descendants such as C.
All this debate how we can make Fortran into a stilted
'me too' imitation of C/C++ is so laughable if it were
were not so pathetic. What are they going to do with
such a monstrous, bloated Fortran - write Interactive
games, operating systems, telephony software ???????
Case in point - the sidesplittingly funny debate on
new logical operators
here is my candidate the AND.THEREFORE.BUT.BECAUSE operator
Fortran will survive if and only if it remains a SMALL
language, designed to express quantitative computation
elegantly and can be compiled with an elegant compiler
to generate efficient code.
That having been vented, here is my argument for implicit typing
Those geeks/barbarians who need to type every variable
EXPLICITLY,
i.e they'll need to say Ax = b
Where A might be character, x might be complex and b logical
let them use implicit none.
For the few civilized souls who would naturally use A and b
as real DATA and x as a real VARIABLE, implicit real typing
is just fine thank you.
In other words, implicit typing INVITES and does not FORCE
coding standards - a great help if one has to maintain code
written by another.
i, j, k used as summation indices without explicit typing
is SAFER than
'rumpelstiltskin' used as an index and declared as integer
hundreds of lines away in the code.
If you ask me if I'd be comfortable if the nuclear reactor
that supplies my power was controlled by Fortran Code that
had implicit typing, I'd say yes.
A simple Flag that will list out ALL IMPLICITLY typed
variables is ALL that is required to make implicit typing
'safe'.
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