[J3] [EXTERNAL] [BULK] Re: Niklaus Wirth

Mon Jan 8 13:02:47 UTC 2024

From my (admittedly rather limited) experience, anti-Fortran prejudice was quite pronounced in the mid-eighties when I was attending college.     Possibly even justified during that era.    My sense is that computer science profs never really adapted after that.  They all “knew” what Fortran (FORTRAN) was/is, and there were no real forces to revise such opinions.  And they then used FORTRAN as the punching bag when teaching subsequent generations.  Even at its best, Fortran was not really ever a language that would appeal in that profession where shiny/different has a higher priority.

Even in science departments there is pronounced ignorance about modern Fortran.  My daughter just completed her PhD in computational chemistry at UC Berkeley.    Profs there were dismissive when she pointed out that Fortran had OO and such.   She was simply wrong.   (Could be some misogyny mixing in with this of course.)

Cheers,

  *   Tom

From: J3 <j3-bounces at mailman.j3-fortran.org> on behalf of j3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org>
Reply-To: j3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org>
Date: Saturday, January 6, 2024 at 9:45 AM
To: 'David Muxworthy' <d.muxworthy at bcs.org.uk>
Cc: "ian.chivers at chiversandbryan.co.uk" <ian.chivers at chiversandbryan.co.uk>, j3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [BULK] Re: [J3] Niklaus Wirth

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Hi David

I'm surprised given the dates
you mention of the late 90's
of the sarcastic comments.

The 90 and 95 standards had made
significant improvements to Fortran.

I have quite a lot of respect for Wirth
for the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon languages.

I also thought that the work they (ETH)
did with the Lilith was pretty good.

https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLilith_%2528computer%2529&data=05%7C02%7Cthomas.l.clune%40nasa.gov%7C420a667574994227bf6408dc0ec61249%7C7005d45845be48ae8140d43da96dd17b%7C0%7C0%7C638401491093668539%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=m6oclPw6mgHh5ftRQd45UefR3ecNsu6HxNafRPRwKKo%3D&reserved=0<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith_%28computer%29>

Sadly when teaching Fortran there is
quite a lot of ignorance of modern Fortran.

On some of the recent courses I've given
people with a Python background tend to be
quite critical, especially
when this is the only language they know.

Ian Chivers

-----Original Message-----
From: David Muxworthy <d.t.muxworthy at btinternet.com<mailto:d.t.muxworthy at btinternet.com>>
Sent: Saturday, January 6, 2024 11:39 AM
To: Ian Chivers <ian.chivers at chiversandbryan.co.uk<mailto:ian.chivers at chiversandbryan.co.uk>>
Cc: General J3 interest list <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org<mailto:j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org>>
Subject: Re: [J3] Niklaus Wirth

The first question is for David what was the date Of the talk?

1998 or 1999 so far as I remember.

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