[J3] What is Jeopardy?

[Holcomb, Katherine A (kah3f)]

The husband of a coworker of mine spent several years while working for the Air Force translating functioning Fortran code to C++ because it was the "new way" and I presume similarly, their new hires only knew C++.  

Having taught CS students (they were not supposed to take my course but they did) I found they had at least as much trouble learning a new language as any other students.  Maybe I just got the weakest ones but a CS faculty member I knew had a similar complaint.

-- 
Katherine Holcomb 
UVA Research Computing   https://www.rc.virginia.edu
kah3f at virginia.edu  434-982-5948

On 12/10/20, 5:23 PM, "J3 on behalf of Bill Long via J3" <j3-bounces at mailman.j3-fortran.org on behalf of j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:

    
    
    > On Dec 10, 2020, at 3:35 PM, Holcomb, Katherine A (kah3f) via J3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org> wrote:
    > 
    > 
    > As part of my job duties I'm also working with a research group that wanted code translated from Fortran to Python.  
    
    What a spectacularly bad idea. !
    
    > Didn't want to learn Fortran (nor C/C++ for that matter).  Python is godawful slow but they tolerate that to avoid compiled language.  I'm not sure what my point is here other than that increasingly it seems that scientists try to hire computer scientists, or at least CS students, to do their programming for them if they need compiled language and of course they want to use C++.
    
    Hiring someone else to write your C++ code is probably a good idea for preserving sanity.  Although having to read the code later will undo any of the previously mentioned benefits. 
    
    Scientists “of a certain age” viewed computer programming as “secretarial work” because of the punched-card aspect, and it involved using a “keyboard”.  Hence the task was assigned to students.  Not surprising that a lot of the programmers these days are those former students, now with PhD’s in physics or chemistry, and a better salary profile than they would have had from the PortDoc sequence…
    
    
    >  I see that as the biggest risk to Fortran.
    
    I had a conversation along these lines with an analyst working at a major aircraft company.  The boss wanted to convert everything to C++ because that was what the Computer Science applicants knew.  My reply was that if the new-hires were not smart enough to learn Fortran in 6 weeks, I didn’t want them involved in designing planes I would end up riding in.  (Last I heard, the code was still in Fortran.)
    
    Cheers,
    Bill
    
    Bill Long                                                                       longb at hpe.com
    Engineer/Master , Fortran Technical Support &   voice:  651-605-9024
    Bioinformatics Software Development                      fax:  651-605-9143
    Hewlett Packard Enterprise/ 2131 Lindau Lane/  Suite 1000/  Bloomington, MN  55425