Help us defend against VMS!

[Larry McVoy]

In article <717 at cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok at quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <4080 at megaron.arizona.edu>, lm at arizona.edu (Larry McVoy) writes:
>> I agree with the rest of the article but this part is not completely
>> true.  VMS fortran is the de facto industry standard.  Until I can have
>> 
>If this is so, it would be interesting to know why Fortran 8X does not
>resemble VMS Fortran.  For example, both let you define record types,
>but the syntax is very different.  IBM's FORTVS doesn't seem to have
>copied much from VMS Fortran either, I've carefully checked a recent
>IBM Fortran manual and couldn't find any of the features that make
>VMS Fortran so sexy.  Apollo's Fortran hasn't any of the VMS extensions
>that I know of.  "de facto industry standard"?  Maybe on Vaxen.

And how many cycles do you think apollos spend chewing on fortran?  Or 
ibm's?

Let me put it this way: consider the type of people that use fortran.
Look at what fortran those people use.  Just because unix has f77
does not make it a fortran oriented machine (also read: f77 is not
the selling point of unix).  To beat a dead horse: would you buy
an apollo to run fortran?  Or a sun for that matter?  Or an ibm?

I think that you should ask fortran hackers what sort of fortran they
want, not Unix/C hackers.
-- 

Larry McVoy	lm at arizona.edu or ...!{uwvax,sun}!arizona.edu!lm