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From: link@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Fortran versus C for numerical anal
Message-ID: <14494@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 20 Sep 88 06:54:58 GMT
References: <1530@ficc.uu.net> <3746@lanl.gov>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 44

In article <3746@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>You are a died-in-the-wool C type 

I am NOT taking a position here regarding C vs FORTRAN in
numerical applications. One Friday night, after probably
too much beer, one of our systems programmers working on a
very complex satellite mission (he also has an MS in physics)
and I had a relatively incoherent discussion on the relative
merits of C and FORTRAN. We both remained unconvinced.

From experience, I suspect that comparing computer languages
is rather like comparing religions. One is either a true
believer or an infidel.

Having taught numerical analysis to senior physics students, let me
say that the choice of language is not all that important. I even
taught Algol for 2 years. However, the arguments against FORTRAN
ignore both its historical and contemporary importance.

Numerical analysis, for better or worse, is virtually synonymous with
FORTRAN. Very few IMPORTANT mathematical packages have been written
in other languages and then ported to FORTRAN; the opposite is the
rule - serious scientific programming is done in FORTRAN. Period.

The latter statement is not an opinion; it is a fact. Check the
available scientific libraries and compare the lines of code available
in C and FORTRAN.

I have yet to discover a single compelling reason to switch from FORTRAN
to C, other than "it's a more modern language". I am grateful for the fact
that I did not endeavour to learn PL/I or Pascal on this specious basis.
Both (!) are still taught at educational institutions I attended.

FORTRAN is a good number-crunching tool; it is not intended to be a good
systems development language such as C. But then C was not designed to
be a number cruncher.

Why don't we all save the bull on the net and try to use the most
appropriate tool for the problem at hand?

Dr. Richard Link
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California, Berkeley
link@ssl.berkeley.edu