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Re: just how bad is Fortran?



Your right, f77 is much more performant in intensive numerical
computations than c or c++, at least on SGI (IRIX). For example, on a
Indigo 2, a version of a code in f77 have a peak performance of 270
MFLOPS. The same code in c/c++ peak at 100 MFLOPS. Ok, maybe the c/c++
version could be more optimized but the fact is with f77 it's easy to
obtain a very performant code, so why use c/c++ and lose a lot of time  to
write a obscur, tricky and slow program?

Dany Dionne
Physics Department
Laval University, Canada  

On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Syrus Nemat-Nasser wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Jul 1997, Adriano Nagelschmidt Rodrigues wrote:
> 
> > Sorry, I can't resist ;-)
> 
> Me either. ;-)
> 
> > fortran (77) is horrible. Well, it _was_ ok, Backus was a pioneer, etc. But we
> > are in the end of the '90s (and I thought only *my* profs were forcing
> > students to use it!)
> > 
> > You will be much better writing your code in ANSI C (pointers aren't difficult
> > once you get to know them).
> 
> This is plainly untrue.  f77 is a much simpler command set with no 
> dynamic allocation, etc.  As a result, a f77 compiler can be optimized to 
> a much greater extent independent of the coding expertise of the 
> programmer, i.e. me.  Thus, f77 is almost always faster than c or c++.  
> Also, in ansi C, there is no intrisic or optimized support for complex 
> numbers.  People who actually do intensive simulations where compile time 
> is not a critical factor can still benefit from using f77.  f90 is 
> another matter, meaning that I no nothing about its efficiency.
> 
> Thanks.  Syrus.
> 
> -- 
> 
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu>    UCSD Physics Dept.
> 
> 
> 
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> 


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