Re: Three liars, in FORTRAN [long]

[James Mclean <jmclean@CHEM.UCSD.EDU>]

kyle forinash wrote:
> Speed of execution is also one reason FORTRAN (a relatively low level,
> complied language) is still around. Other languages (such as C/C++) are
> writen at a "higher level" and have been developed to have more built-in
> functionality (a computer science term- I didn't invent it) at the cost of
> having a little slower execution time.
Huh?  I thought that the original attraction of C was that it was
very "close to the machine", compared to comtemporaries FORTRAN and
Pascal.  It has things like an increment operator, which machine language
does but FORTRAN doesn't.  On the other hand, FORTRAN has built-in output
functions, while the C language itself does not (the C input/output
routines are actually in standard libraries, sort of like software
plugins).

I didn't know about the speed advantage FORTRAN still has.  Could it be due
to FORTRAN being more focused on floating point math?

--
--James McLean
jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu
post doc
UC San Diego, Chemistry