[J3] BCS Fortran survey - final report

[Vipul Parekh]

Anton,

What I think will be helpful is the analyses and conclusion(s) by BCS
Fortran committee (it appears there are 13 persons on it, so it's
reasonably sized) to go with these survey results.

Though >45% of the responses appear to rate 4 or better in terms of
"cost savings" due to "newer standards", the responses toward the
"future of the language" are all over the place and they are wide open
to interpretation (not surprisingly).

 So what is BCS Fortran committee's take on it, perhaps it's

* "Fortran is a dead language and its use should be banned by an act
of Parliament"!! or

* "don’t add features. Keep the language stable and simple."! or

* some compact responses such as "1) Generics e.g., ability to
compactly compose subprograms that can operate on any type or a set of
stated types; ability to efficiently design containers for data of any
type or a set of stated types such as lists, stacks, maps, queues,
etc. 2) Scoped enumerations (reference: C++ or Microsoft .NET), a must
for modern code in order to advance beyond the ordinary named
constants; 3) Derived type and OO enhancements including SEALED (NON
OVERRIDABLE) classes, MOVE semantics, clear concept of namespaces with
a third option in mind other than PRIVATE/PUBLIC attributes of type
components and bound procedures so that everything useful with respect
to extension types."

or something else altogether, it'll be good to know.

Thanks and regards,
Vipul Parekh

On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 5:26 PM Anton Shterenlikht via J3
<j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
>
> http://www.fortran.bcs.org/2019/FortranBenefitsSurvey_final.pdf
>
> I hope this will be of use to J3.
>
> Anton