In the past year or so I have been getting positive responses to Fortran
90/95. It seems to me that the message is finally trickling back to
academia that Fortran 90 is not such a bad language for its niche.
=
Transparencies for my recent talk, "You Can Keep Your Java; The New
Fortran Subsets are My Cup of Tea":

= (1) =
Headlines of 1977 - The Year's Most Important Events
1. YOU are born. [[i.e., a typical student in the audience]]
2. Computers are being used to COMPUTE!
   - the Fortran niche
3. PROGRAM STRUCTURE (modern programming language constructs) has
recently been discovered.
4. Fortran 77 is standardized.

= (2, 3) =
"TRADITIONAL FORTRAN" chronology (1956 - 1990)
1. Mathematical operators BUILT IN
 - Exponentiation: A ** B
 - Complex (NOT TRIVIAL)
 - Some array ops (F77: 7 dimensions; arbitrary lower bound)
2. Attitude toward OPTIMIZATION
 - Example: Zero-trip DO [[the one-trip minimum was preferred by some
because it can be faster for very tight loops]]
 - Compare JAVA [[The latter has a "hardware model" that must be
followed: W. Kahan notes that JAVA can't use extended precision for
scalar products]]
3. Strings in F77 [[Barely mentioned in today's talk]]
4. OBSOLETE features of traditional Fortran were IDENTIFIED in F90 but
NOT REMOVED
 - Some uses of Statement Labels
 - Storage Association NOT considered obsolete!

= (4) =
MORE CHRONOLOGY: 1977 - 1995
 - PC
 - Pascal, C, C++, ADA, JAVA
 - "Object-Oriented Programming"
 - "Infinite" storage and speed
 - Fortran 90; Fortran 95
 - Parallel and High Performance dialects

= (5) =
Fortran 90 & 95
 - "Structures"; Pointers
 - Whole-Array Operations and Array Sections
 - . . . (etc.)
 - Language PERMITS viewing data as OBJECTS (full OO coming soon)
MODERN FORTRAN HAS EVERYTHING!

= (6) =
in fact. . MODERN FORTRAN (full language) HAS WAY TOO MUCH!
 - Main example: Storage Association
 - Does not REQUIRE use of modern features such as:
   Explicit data declarations
   Explicit procedure interface
   Modular program structure

= (7) =
Subsets support ALL advanced features BUT PROHIBIT THE "JUNK"
    e-LF is FREE (single-user license; no documentation or support)
www.lahey.com
    F is $100 (single-user full license including textbook)
www.imagine1.com/imagine1
 - Either subset is an excellent learning base
 - But what about the "real world" of Fortran "Legacy" code - ?? [[If
you get a job that requires "Fortran Experience," your first assignment
will be to find a very obscure bug in a huge program that was written
long before you were born and has been patched every 3 months since.
Partial answer: some restructuring tools are available.]]
=
Loren P. Meissner
<[log in to unmask]>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Chivers
> Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 1998 11:33 AM
> Subject: Re: RE: helping to promote fortran 90
>
> On Tue, 5 May 1998 09:13:25 -0700 "Loren P. Meissner"
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > I gave a talk . . .
>
> what was the response like? . . .




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