When I was at WorldCom (the last year before bankruptcy) there was a project to translate legacy Fortran (mostly running on TOPS machines, precursors of VAX) to C (to run on new AIX machines). A consulting company was engaged which specialized in that translation and automated most of it.
It turned out there were few of us around familar with both languages, so I got involved in reviewing the initial translation. It's easy to translate fortran to C (f77 did that right? on System V?) but it's not easy to translate it into readable C. The consultants had told us that their clients tended to maintain their source base in fortran, and do ongoing automated translations to propogate their maintenance, but they said they didn't know why. It turns out that the automaton produces C which is morphed to look like Fortran, so for example this: 100 WRITE (6, 200, X) 200 FORMAT(...) turns into fortranlikeWRITE(output_device_6, "LineNumber200", X) LineNumber200: fortranlikeFORMAT(...) instead of fprintf(stdout, "%d", X); so d'uh, no wonder that their clients maintain this code in fortran, and not in C. So there are some fortran progammers with jobs around here, good :-) I don't draw any conclusions about the futures of any languages: really I think it won't matter much as compilers get smarter and we'll express ourselves any way we like. Also, sorry for the fudgy fortran, I'm very rusty. Peter ... > I have a staff of 5. Of these 3 are conversant in Fortran. Our ages are > 52, 43, and 40. We deal with fortran on a daily basis to support our HPC > users in Physics, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical > Engineering, and occasionally even statistics. Supporting these users > represents over $20 Million of direct funding to the University. > > > I remember a time in the mid 1980's when I questioned the value of > Fortran. But it's still here, it's still used, and we still need people > who understand it to answer the next generation of questions in the > basic sciences. > > > Mike Davis > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
