[Info-vax] nice for VMS

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:
(snip regarding SPARC)
 
>> Because unaligned access crashes the program (segmentation fault).
 
> I never noticed that one!  I don't do much programming these days.  When 
> I did, I learned to avoid access violations, segmentation faults, 0C0 
> ABENDS  (IBM 360/91) etc.  We had some very nice software from Waterloo 
> Univerity called WATFOR, and, later WATFIV.  It told you exactly where 
> you had screwed up.  I learned a lot from it about the no-no's of 
> programming.  It gave a screamingly fast compilation and excellent 
> diagnostics.  You didn't want to use it for any serious number crunching 
> however!

I did some debugging of some number crunching programs
with WATFIV.  I needed to find some array bounds and undefined
variable problems that Fortran H wouldn't catch.  The program
and sample data compiled in about 30 seconds on Fortran H, 
and also ran in about 30 seconds.  WATFIV compiled it in
about 3 seconds, but it took much longer to run.  

-- glen