From psmith@mozart.convex.com Thu Mar 19 17:19:58 1992 Received: from convex.convex.com by dkuug.dk via EUnet with SMTP (5.64+/8+bit/IDA-1.2.8) id AA21090; Thu, 19 Mar 92 17:19:58 +0100 Received: from mozart.convex.com by convex.convex.com (5.64/1.35) id AA29617; Thu, 19 Mar 92 10:18:51 -0600 Received: by mozart.convex.com (5.64/1.28) id AA12098; Thu, 19 Mar 92 10:18:50 -0600 Date: Thu, 19 Mar 92 10:18:50 -0600 From: psmith@mozart.convex.com (Presley Smith) Message-Id: <9203191618.AA12098@mozart.convex.com> To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk, walt@netcom.com Subject: Re: (SC22WG5.74) From market surveys to "design" Cc: psmith@mozart.convex.com X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Wow, I hit a nerve! > The problem with the last committee and with Fortran 90 is that there > was never a consensus in the committee of what the main target market was. >Wrong. There was concensus prior to about 1985 when the membership >starting changing rapidly. Obviously those who were in consensus were not knowledgable of the procedures... ANSI wants a new version of a standard every 5 years... or you have to re-affirm the old one again... I assume that there was consensus for what Fortran 8x should be by about the time FORTRAN 77 was completed... Let's see... 1978 to 1985... that's 7 years. X3J3 should have had the next version for Fortran completed, public review done, and it ready for publication by 1985 according to the PROCEDURES. You complain that the procedures hurt your efforts. It appears the committee did not use the procedures to their advantage. Who's problem is that? Don't complain about others using the procedures to their advantage. There is equal opportunity for all to use the procedures... > They wanted INCLUDE, CRAY Pointers, VAX Structures, REAL*, etc. etc. >And they will all say they don't want their taxes raised, but that does >not NECESSARILY mean what they say is best for the computing community. >[Insert Keith's reminder about how representation works here again.] You know Walt, this statement is the prime reason that I and some others don't agree with you and some of the others on X3J3. This committee was NOT formed to say what is "best for the computing community." You will not find such a statement in the X3J3 charter. YOU or I or this COMMITTEE do not know what is best for the computing community!!! This committee was formed to standardize the Fortran language. Not to tell the consumers of Fortran what is "best for the computing community... And the consumers of Fortran will determine how well the committee did. They'll vote with their dollars and their usage... I can tell you that those who tax me certainly are NOT looking out for MY interests. They may think they know what's "best for the country" but it's unclear that's their prime interest either! Their prime interest is playing politics and fighting with each other. And adding their own little pot of money for their pet projects to the larger spending bills where there is no line item veto. I just read the other day that they are going to spend $500,000 to study the habitat of this fly that is in danger of extinction in Mississippi. Would you rather have another $1 in your pocket to spend or have it spent on flies in Mississippi? Time to quit thinking that you or I or X3J3 knows what's best for the computing community... > You know, I'm told more all the time, that to design good software you > must spend more time up front... get the design right. Test the > design. Prototype the design. DON'T start coding!!! Design it and > verify it and spend most of the time on the project doing that... > > Don't you think a standards committee should do the same? > > FYI. Presley >This is exactly what X3J3 did up to about 1985 (well, approximately >what X3J3 did; it's a little hard to start with Fortran 77 and >say with a straight face that anything based on it is really designed). >The rest of the time was spent trying to keep the language from >being totally decimated by those who didn't like the results of >that "design". This is interesting... If FORTRAN 77 was so bad, why was it so successful? Oh well. (I'm sure I'll get some response from this like..."it was all that was available"...to which I will say BS before some sends that response...) If X3J3 did not want to enhance FORTRAN 77 with new features, but instead wanted to start over and make a NEW LANGUAGE, then X3J3 should have re-written their charter to do that... oh well. If the foundation of a building is flawed, you don't keep adding on the building and hope the foundation gets better. You tear the building down and build a new building... on a better foundation. If the base design of Fortran has so many problems, then lets freeze Fortran and re-do the charter of X3J3 to write Scientific Language 1 or something... I know... the process got in the way! X3J3 signed up back in those dark days for enhancing FORTRAN 77 instead of creating a new language... >Appealing to high-minded principles like market surveys and >software "design" is nice, but it will always come down to simply >what the members of X3J3 and WG5 want and/or think will be good for >the Fortran computing community. >Many surveys were taken in the late '70s and the result was used >to create the proposed Fortran 90 that you dislike so much, so I >wouldn't count on that to provide justification for your position. Do you have a copy of those surveys or summaries of those surveys? I've never seen them. They were never discussed after I got to X3J3. I'd like to have a look at them. Maybe that will make me change my mind on some of the issues... If you'll copy and mail me a copy, I'll study them. Who said I "dislike" Fortran 90. I've NEVER said the I "disliked" Fortran 90. I've said lots of things... like it's too big, it's too much for a single update of a standard, it didn't meet the letter of the charter for the committee, etc. etc... Fortran 90 is a beautiful language... I've voted NO and continue to vote NO for reasons other than a "dislike" of the language... You know Walt, one of the main issues is that even the members of this committee don't listen to each other and understand what they say... If you think I "dislike" Fortran 90 so much, you haven't been listening to what I've been saying... Walt let me summarize the BS in this piece from you... 1. Someone knows what's best for the computing community - no way 2. The base of FORTRAN 77 was flawed meaning the base of Fortran is flawed - could have been better... for the machines and programming methodologies they had when it was created, it was better than anything else... The only way to fix that is to start with a clean slate... 3. Presley dislikes Fortran 90 - not true. Presley votes NO for many reasons, but not because he "dislikes" Fortran 90. We're having fun now!! Presley