(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.4192) WG5 Las Vegas Feb-2010/J3 m191 minutes 10-144

Toon Moene toon
Tue Feb 23 16:53:05 EST 2010


Van Snyder wrote:

> The only way to make Fortran attractive to young people is to keep it on
> a track to becoming and remaining a modern language

No.

My experience with people coming fresh from University (i.e., half my 
age) is that slowly, they begin to see that there is not *that* much 
difference between the MatLab they used at the University and Fortran.

Yes, there's the compiler-vs-interpreter thing and the small differences 
in syntax, and the fact that you don't have that many readily available 
packages that are soooo useful in MatLab.

Young people are not stupid - on the contrary, they're flexible.  To 
quote "The Soul Of A New Machine": "Let's hire people fresh from college 
- they don't know yet what's impossible."

As for your management's project to rewrite your Fortran code into C++: 
I've already referred to that to *my* management as the "JPL project 
with a break-even time well into the 22nd century".  Now tell me it 
ain't so :-)

Cheers,

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon at moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.5/changes.html



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