[J3] Why is += missing?

[Malcolm Cohen]

>> It bloats the language with extra (and un-Fortran-like) syntax. There is
a cognitive load associated with the size of a language.

> 

>The cost to users of unused language features is zero. 

 

That is just not true, unless by "unused" you mean "unused by everyone
including the textbooks".

 

> make the cognitive load of Fortran so high as to harm the community

 

Not by itself, of course not. But every straw adds to the camel's back.

 

> Are you actually going to assert that a substantial fraction Fortran
programmers are familiar with so few other common program languages

 

Yes, for one thing there are many people programming who are not
professional programmers. Some of those know both C and Fortran, some may
know C but not Fortran, and some Fortran but not C.

 

(I also know a number of people I would class as professional programmers
who know Fortran - even Modern Fortran - pretty well, but who know little of
C/Python/et al. But I would guess they would be a fairly small and dwindling
subset these days.)

 

> subsequently be unable to help themselves

 

Of course not, it just makes their work a little harder and a little more
error-prone.

 

> Did you look at the code I shared? 

 

I made no claim that the SUM intrinsic helped that specific code. (That
specific code doesn't appear to really need much help at first glance, but
anyway.) It does, however, help some other situations where a C user would
have been using +=. Not sure why this is controversial.

 

I note that we have not finished the current revision, which makes this
discussion somewhat premature. I'll note that some of the other suggestions
made also deserve consideration for this particular "use-case" (at first
glance, some of those appear more desirable than op=).

 

I look forward to a fuller and enlightening discussion in a couple of years
time.

 

Cheers,

-- 

..............Malcolm Cohen, NAG Oxford/Tokyo.

 

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