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Retire Fortran?: a debate rekindled

Retire Fortran?: a debate rekindled David Cann I ETII E ]ORT]AN A Debate Rekindled -of 1984, te between ~cGraw ~awrence ivermore tional Laboratory ( L L N L ) and David Kuck and Michael Wolfe of Kuck and Associates, appeared in P h y s i c s T o d a y [19]. The subject was whether to retire Fortran. Eight years have passed, and we wish to reopen the debate and provide further evidence that Fortran is not the s i n e q u a n o n of high-speed computing. Many believe that the existing investments in Fortran and the quality of existing Fortran compilers are preventing a change in programming methodology. Many also feel that support for Fortran must continue because the language is familiar and widely available. Unfortunately, the complexity of writing correct parallel programs in Fortran is perpetuating today's software crisis. We believe, as did McGraw in 1984, that increased productivity, generality, utility, portability, and performance are only possible if programmers avoid the constraints of imperative languages and adopt a higher level of abstraction. We must escape the morass of imperative semantics and attain a level of abstraction that separates the p r o g r http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Communications of the ACM Association for Computing Machinery

Retire Fortran?: a debate rekindled

Cann, David
Communications of the ACM , Volume 35 (8) – Aug 1, 1992
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References (24)

Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
0001-0782
DOI
10.1145/135226.135231
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

David Cann I ETII E ]ORT]AN A Debate Rekindled -of 1984, te between ~cGraw ~awrence ivermore tional Laboratory ( L L N L ) and David Kuck and Michael Wolfe of Kuck and Associates, appeared in P h y s i c s T o d a y [19]. The subject was whether to retire Fortran. Eight years have passed, and we wish to reopen the debate and provide further evidence that Fortran is not the s i n e q u a n o n of high-speed computing. Many believe that the existing investments in Fortran and the quality of existing Fortran compilers are preventing a change in programming methodology. Many also feel that support for Fortran must continue because the language is familiar and widely available. Unfortunately, the complexity of writing correct parallel programs in Fortran is perpetuating today's software crisis. We believe, as did McGraw in 1984, that increased productivity, generality, utility, portability, and performance are only possible if programmers avoid the constraints of imperative languages and adopt a higher level of abstraction. We must escape the morass of imperative semantics and attain a level of abstraction that separates the p r o g r

Journal

Communications of the ACM – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Aug 1, 1992

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