Re: FORTRAN common blocks
I find that Fortran compilers are much better at picking up
mistakes than C compilers. I also find the language much more intuitive -
but this may simply reflect my having much more experience of Fortran than
C.
As regards the capital letters - I invariably use lower case in
Fortan these days as it is much more pleasant to read. However, it is
convenient that older code uses capitals as it reminds one that it has not
been converted to f95 yet.
One problem I have never been able to resolve - I accept that C is
better for systems programming, but why on earth does anyone use it for
scientific code? Can somebody enlighten me?
Richard James.
On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Rupert Swarbrick wrote:
> Justin Pryzby wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 11:41:54PM +0000, Rupert Swarbrick wrote:
> >
> >>I'm growing to hate fortran with a vengeance. And this is F95!
> >
> > I'm just curious, why? I know it has a bad repuation, but don't have
> > any 1st hand experience. I was of the impression that f95 was much
> > better; what problems remain?
> >
>
> Maybe I'm being unfair, but I've gotten used to C,Java,Perl etc., where
> whitespace can be used to make the code quite human-readable.
>
> I don't wish to start a flame war, but I really believe that new code
> should _NEVER_ be written in fortran. Even well written (which
> fortunately the engineering stuff I was working with is), it's a
> nightmare to follow - blocks of capitals stream across the screen...
>
> And, yes, I know that the identifier restrictions have been relaxed in
> fortran 95, but of course older code doesn't have that. I'm also not
> really sure of any advantage fortran has over C/C++ - it's only just got
> pointers, for goodness' sake!
>
> That said, if there are arguments for the use of fortran in new code
> (that aren't to do with interfacing with BLAS/whatever), I'd be
> interested to hear them - maybe I'm being narrow minded!
>
>
> Rupert
>
> P.S., Justin: Sorry for reposting, but I forgot to hit reply all.
>
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