On Fri, 27 May 2005 13:29:16 -0700, lgb wrote:

In article ,
says...
Dave Hinz wrote:

...

I just couldn't stand the whole "doing things 4 times" aspect of it.
Hey, I'm gonna use a variable. Here is what it's called. Here is what
it's set to. OK, now, use it.
...

I've used Fortran since before there was a Standard in many incarnations
but fail to recognize the above complaint???


Same reaction here. Of course you had to use DIMENSION and EQUIVALENCE
statements, but simple variables could be used without decaratives.
Some versions even set all data to zero when the program started, so you
wouldn't get the undefined values problem.

The best thing that ever happened to Fortran was Ratfor.

BTW, I really like C's use of functions and absence of subroutines. The
Modcomp realtime minis I used to use a lot had Fortran interfaces to
system functions that looked like:

CALL XYZ( A,B,C,D,.TRUE.,.TRUE.,.FALSE., ... .TRUE.,0)

I contemplated homicide every time I had to figure out what one of those
was actually doing.

When we transitioned from doing algorithm development in Fortran to C,
one of our more senior alg developers finally acquiesced and decided he
could live with using C when he found the GOTO statement.

Absolutely brilliant algorithm developer, you just didn't want to have to
be the one who had to figure out what his code was doing.






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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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