| Re: Why these original FORTRAN quirks? |
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Group: comp.lang.fortran · Group Profile
Author: blmblmblmblm Date: Nov 23, 2006 05:10
In article s765.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com>,
aol.com> wrote:
[ snip ]
>>Bill Gates spotted the software market future and IBM didn't; but the
>>costs of using Fortran for any scientific work are becoming ridiculous.
>
>
>
> What lanugage do you think scientists use instead of FORTRAN?
Belatedly chiming in to add a data point:
The scientist in the office next to mine (well, I think I can call
him that even though he works for an academic CS department, since
he has a PhD in a "real science" and works on large astrophysics
simulations?) mostly uses C++ and Java (with the Java getting more
use to write companion tools, e.g., for plotting stuff). IIRC, when
he was in grad school he thought about teaching himself Fortran 9x
so he could adapt and extend some old Fortran/FORTRAN code, but at
the time Fortran 9x compilers weren't sufficiently mature to give
good-performing code if the "new" features were used. So he stuck
with C++ (which he'd presumably learned from doing a lot of academic
CS as well).
There was a recent post in -- comp.lang.fortran I think -- by Richard
Maine in which he said (IIRC) that somewhere in NASA you could
probably find someone using just about any language.
> I know of one site that is willing to spend $50K/year(est.) for
> a language because the development and support and agility to
> do the computer work the scientists need is worth it.
--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
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