Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!peregrine!elroy!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!garth!smryan From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran Subject: Re: (none) Message-ID: <1215@garth.UUCP> Date: 12 Aug 88 20:07:19 GMT References: <651@<8052> <50500063@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA Lines: 19 > >We have to resolve this dusty deck problem. If the problem is > >pure compatibility, then we can never win. Not if users want > > The answer to that is simple: absolutely nothing. Fortran users >expect that ALL presently working programs will continue to run on >all future versions of compilers on the same hardware. They expect >that all legal Fortran 77 programs will run on all compilers called The problem is even worse than trying to wrench people from fortran 66. The compilers inevitably have bugs and users tend to code around those. Some users in fact incorporate those bugs into their code which means all it takes is a corrective code release without any new features to break user programs. And they will complain. And if you aren't allowed to make corrections, forget about new features, and didn't even dream of enhancements.