F2003 complier, how far from us?

I had started to write my code in the summer of 2006. I choosed
fortran as my program language for the reason that the F2003 standard
which released in 2004. I wants oo and something like STL which in c++
(class (*) in fortran 2003). However, two year years later today, no
one compiler was realesed in Windows platform of full oo capicity. I'm
surprised about the development of fortran!

I'm a little disappointed! May be c++ is more excellenced today.

F2003 complier, how far from us?

On Aug 25, 10:08 am, Simulate <li.sim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I had started to write my code in the summer of 2006. I choosed
> fortran as my program language for the reason that the F2003 standard
> which released in 2004. I wants oo and something like STL which in c++
> (class (*) in fortran 2003). However, two year years later today, no
> one compiler was realesed in Windows platform of full oo capicity. I'm
> surprised about the development of fortran!
>
> I'm a little disappointed! May be c++ is more excellenced today.
>
> F2003 complier, how far from us?

For OO programming, C++ is definitely better. However, matrix math in C
++ is more complicated, partly because there are many different C++
matrix implementations. In addition, OO programming is generally
slower, and most Fortran programs are aimed at high-performance. Most
Fortran programmers are not very interested in using OO for
computational code. Therefore, compiler developers are not in a hurry
to implement it. (At least that is my take on the situation.)

If you are interested in OO programming as more of a data management
feature, or for creating a user interface, it may make sense to write
just the OO parts in C++. Then you can write the math code in Fortran,
and use C calls to join them together. IMHO, using Fortran for math
and avoiding it for non-math is a good programming model, which can
now be portable with ISO_C_BINDING.

F2008 adds features that improve the usability of type classes, so it
is possible that these features will become a higher priority.

> F2003 complier, how far from us?

Cray and IBM Fortran compilers are almost complete w.r.t to the 2003
standard but other vendors like Intel, Sun etc. are certainly behind.
A good read would be

Compiler support for the Fortran 2003 standard
ACM SIGPLAN Fortran Forum, Volume 26 , Issue 3 (December 2007).
Pages 20-22

Though it's almost 9 months old now.

On Aug 25, 1:35 pm, rusi_pathan <tabrez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > F2003 complier, how far from us?
>
> Cray and IBM Fortran compilers are almost complete w.r.t to the 2003
> standard but other vendors like Intel, Sun etc. are certainly behind.
> A good read would be
>

With regards to the features in the OOP chapter of Metcalf, Reid &
Cohen, IBM's implementation is complete as far as I know. I have
written a few thousand lines of code that exercise nearly every
feature in that chapter.

Damian

>
> For OO programming, C++ is definitely better. However, matrix math in C
> ++ is more complicated, partly because there are many different C++
> matrix implementations. In addition, OO programming is generally
> slower, and most Fortran programs are aimed at high-performance. Most
> Fortran programmers are not very interested in using OO for
> computational code. Therefore, compiler developers are not in a hurry
> to implement it. (At least that is my take on the situation.)

I disagree with a lot of what's written here. It's probably the case
that naive OO implementations are often slower than their procedural
counterparts -- primarily due to insufficient foresight and
insufficient understanding of how to write high-performance OO code.
One example of a massively scalable OO mathematical library is the
Trilinos library (http://trilinos.sandia.gov/). Trilinos scales
efficiently up to thousands of processors and is projected to scale up
to petaflops soon. Efficiency and programming paradigm are largely
orthogonal when done with great care.

I also think the statement that "Most Fortran programmers are not very
interested in using OO" is largely due to a war of attrition. Most
high-performance programmers who wanted to write OO code abandoned
Fortran a decade ago because it took so long for the language to
finally support OO. There are a few of us who stuck with it and
emulated OO in Fortran 95 while awaiting true OO in Fortran 2003. If
the compiler vendors showed less reluctance to move forward, Fortran
might be able to attract more OO programmers. As I've noted here
before, it appears gfortran will be ahead of most commercial vendors
in this regard soon. It's kind of sad that a group of volunteers is
putting a lot of large companies to shame, but I guess this isn't the
first example (cf. Linux).

>
> If you are interested in OO programming as more of a data management
> feature, or for creating a user interface, it may make sense to write
> just the OO parts in C++. Then you can write the math code in Fortran,
> and use C calls to join them together. IMHO, using Fortran for math
> and avoiding it for non-math is a good programming model, which can
> now be portable with ISO_C_BINDING.
>
> F2008 adds features that improve the usability of type classes, so it
> is possible that these features will become a higher priority.

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:08:45 -0700 (PDT), Simulate posted:

> I had started to write my code in the summer of 2006. I choosed
> fortran as my program language for the reason that the F2003 standard
> which released in 2004. I wants oo and something like STL which in c++
> (class (*) in fortran 2003). However, two year years later today, no
> one compiler was realesed in Windows platform of full oo capicity. I'm
> surprised about the development of fortran!
>
> I'm a little disappointed! May be c++ is more excellenced today.
>
> F2003 complier, how far from us?

The problem with your question is that the more a person knows about it,
the less he seems inclined to share.

As for me, I've renewed my commitment to f95.

If you want OO now, pass to an OO language like Python. You'll get DT's
before you get PDT's.
--
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice
as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. 1
H. L. Mencken

On Aug 25, 4:47 pm, Damian <dam...@rouson.net> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 1:35 pm, rusi_pathan <tabrez...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > F2003 complier, how far from us?
>
> > Cray and IBM Fortran compilers are almost complete w.r.t to the 2003
> > standard but other vendors like Intel, Sun etc. are certainly behind.
> > A good read would be
>
> With regards to the features in the OOP chapter of Metcalf, Reid &
> Cohen, IBM's implementation is complete as far as I know. I have
> written a few thousand lines of code that exercise nearly every
> feature in that chapter.
>
> Damian

The sad part is that compilers from both Cray and IBM are platform
specific/non-free and few people have access to them.

Intel and Sun OTOH offer free Fortran compilers which you can run on
any x86 box running linux.

rusi_pathan wrote:

> On Aug 25, 4:47 pm, Damian <dam...@rouson.net> wrote:
>
>>On Aug 25, 1:35 pm, rusi_pathan <tabrez...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>F2003 complier, how far from us?
>>
>>>Cray and IBM Fortran compilers are almost complete w.r.t to the 2003
>>>standard but other vendors like Intel, Sun etc. are certainly behind.
>>>A good read would be
>>
>>With regards to the features in the OOP chapter of Metcalf, Reid &
>>Cohen, IBM's implementation is complete as far as I know. I have
>>written a few thousand lines of code that exercise nearly every
>>feature in that chapter.
>>
>>Damian
>
>
> The sad part is that compilers from both Cray and IBM are platform
> specific/non-free and few people have access to them.
>
> Intel and Sun OTOH offer free Fortran compilers which you can run on
> any x86 box running linux.

Maybe that's a lesson...sell, don't give away your product so that you
can afford to put the necessary resources toward updating to the latest
standard? (devil's advocate...)

--

Gary Scott
mailto:garylscott@sbcglobal dot net

Fortran Library: http://www.fortranlib.com

Support the Original G95 Project: http://www.g95.org
-OR-
Support the GNU GFortran Project: http://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/index.html

If you want to do the impossible, don't hire an expert because he knows
it can't be done.

-- Henry Ford

Gary Scott wrote:
....
> Maybe that's a lesson...sell, don't give away your product so that you
> can afford to put the necessary resources toward updating to the latest
> standard? (devil's advocate...)

Some truth to that, probably...but, having the platform-specific product
is probably key in the mix, too, any more (and there are fewer and fewer
of those as time goes by)...

--

On Aug 25, 6:38 pm, rusi_pathan <tabrez...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 25, 4:47 pm, Damian <dam...@rouson.net> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 25, 1:35 pm, rusi_pathan <tabrez...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > F2003 complier, how far from us?
>
> > > Cray and IBM Fortran compilers are almost complete w.r.t to the 2003
> > > standard but other vendors like Intel, Sun etc. are certainly behind.
> > > A good read would be
>
> > With regards to the features in the OOP chapter of Metcalf, Reid &
> > Cohen, IBM's implementation is complete as far as I know. I have
> > written a few thousand lines of code that exercise nearly every
> > feature in that chapter.
>
> > Damian
>
> The sad part is that compilers from both Cray and IBM are platform
> specific/non-free and few people have access to them.
>
> Intel and Sun OTOH offer free Fortran compilers which you can run on
> any x86 box running linux.

IBM's compiler also runs on Linux (in addition to AIX), but only when
Linux is installed on IBM processors. In a way, this is not too
different from Intel running on x86 (and AMD, which I think is binary
compatible with x86), but we just don't think of that as being
platform-specific since x86 processors are ubiquitous. Anyway, I
really wish IBM would support compilation on x86. It would make my
life a lot easier and expand their user base, but I guess it wouldn't
make as good a case for buying IBM hardware.

Damian