NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/edu/1496

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-02 | 3.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Lezz Giles)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
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Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 20:42:55 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Kelly D. Crawford) writes:
|>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Fergus James HENDERSON) writes:
|>> [e-mail] (Michael Meissner) writes:
|>>
|>> >In article <[e-mail]> Zafer KADI
|>> ><[e-mail]> writes:
|>> >
|>> >| I have been on both sides of issue (I have MS's in both Mech.Eng CS)
|>> >|
|>> >| There is no one wrong or right on the issue of :
|>> >|
|>> >| 1. FORTRAN or anyother language.
|>> >|    All you Computer Science major that think Fortran is so bad    can
|>> >| you tell me anyother language that has all the forms of numbers
|>> >| that the scinetist use such as integers, real numbers and COMPLEX
|>> >| numbers.
|>> >
|>> >C++.
|>>
|>> Exactly. What's more, with C++ I can have arbitrary precision integers,
|>> arbitrary precision rational numbers, fixed point real numbers, etc.
|>> (all of these are available using GNU's libg++). If you want
|>> quaternions, then it's no big deal to add them too.
|>>
|>> Of course there is no single language that will please everybody, but IMHO
|>> teaching new CS students Fortran is not making the best use of the
|>> limited course time available.
|>>
|>
|>With trillions of lines of existing Fortran in the scientific marketplace, it is a
|>travesty not to teach CS students Fortran sometime during their education.
|>I'm not trying to argue language merits here, but just pointing out that I
|>know many CS majors that have no clue about Fortran ("Oh, I've heard lots
|>of bad things about it.") and are lost when it comes to having to work with
|>existing code.  Perhaps not an entire class, but they need to have some basic
|>familiarity with it, just because of the high likelihood that they will run into it
|>sometime during their career.

But if their CS course was any good at all then they should be able to
pick up any new language - particularly a procedural language like Fortran -
in a very short time.  I didn't learn any C at university, but when it came
to my first job I taught myself the basics of C by simply reading the appendix
to K&R 1.  I firmly believe that I could learn the basics of Fortran in about
an afternoon, if not in less time.  I wouldn't become a Fortran hacker in that
time but I would become a competent Fortran programmer, simply because I am
already a competent C/Pascal/Perl/Algol/Imp/shell/etc. etc. programmer.
Remember the saying "Teach a man Fortran and he'll program today, but teach him
programming and he'll program forever" :-)

Of course, if their CS course wasn't any good then that explains your complaint :-(

Lezz Giles