From maine@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov Wed Mar 18 20:06:26 1992
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Date: Wed, 18 Mar 92 11:07:25 PST
From: maine@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov (Richard Maine)
Message-Id: <9203181907.AA07305@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov>
To: sc22wg5@dkuug.dk
In-Reply-To: Presley Smith's message of Wed, 18 Mar 92 11:42:56 -0600 <9203181742.AA29269@mozart.convex.com>
Subject: (SC22WG5.68) Re:  Another tangent
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I've stayed out of this thread so far because it seems to have too much the
flavor of a flame war and too little useful content.  Temptation wins again,
though.  I'll give in to the extent of one posting and then I'll try to
shut back up.

psmith@mozart.convex.com (Presley Smith) said:

Presley> We really should try to get a picture of what the Fortran community
Presley> looks like...
Presley> I'll start the process.  My Fortran base is made up of customers who's
Presley> prime concern is PERFORMANCE!...

I represent a viewpoint almost diametrically opposed.  I am, of
course, concerned with performance, but it is distinctly not my
highest priority.  My highest priorities are divided more among areas
like code reliability and maintainability and programmer productivity.
These are why I view things like modules and several of the other new
f90 features as big improvements.

I have very little interest in code that runs very fast, but gets
wrong results. Believe me, I have seen many examples of such codes,
sometimes codes that have been in production use giving wrong results
for years. I view it as a very serious concern, not an academic debate.

I don't intend to argue what set of priorities is "best"; such
arguments tend to become pointless flame wars and this particular one
is not new.  I only mean to suggest that there does exist a
significant group of users with priorities like mine.  I am one and I
know others.  I also know users with priorities more like those
Presley describes.  I won't invent unsupportable numbers or
percentages.

Presley> How big a group is this?  It's public information that we have about
Presley> 1000 computers with 500 customers.  If we take 50 programmers per 
Presley> customer, which is probably low, then that equals about 25,000
Presley> Fortran users who's main concern is performance.  

This is awfully speculative.  We jump from a presumably accurate number
of systems through a speculation about the numbers of programmers,
an assumption that all of these are Fortran programmers, add a
blanket claim that all (or at least some unspecified large percentage)
of these have performance as their primary concern, and we get a number.

I simply can't believe that all of Presley's customers are quite so
unanimous.  I can't find such unanimity in my own branch, much less
such an impressive number as 25,000 people.  I think I'm counted among
Presley's 25,000.  NASA Ames has several Convex machines and our site
has been considering one.  (Though I've recently been getting more
insistent with their sales reps that if I can't run f90 on the
machine, I'm not interested - trying to play my part in this "market"
that will decide the true fate of f90).  If I was counted, perhaps you
should revise that figure to 24,999.

I am in the process of joining X3J3 and one of my primary reasons for
doing so is to help represent what I see as user concerns.  I have
no allusions that any one person can represent the entire spectrum of
users.  I would hate to see Fortran become too narrowly aimed at any
one niche.  Yet balancing disparate concerns such as performance
versus robustness is not always easy.  (And adding politics to the
brew doesn't make it any easier).  I don't have simple answers and
I've probably blathered on for long enough.

--
Richard Maine
maine@altair.dfrf.nasa.gov