[Info-vax] [OT] Current students apparently can't read Fortran code...

[Don Baccus]

On Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at 6:49:05 PM UTC-7, Galen wrote:
> > Fortran 66 was available for most of that period. 
> > 
> > Fortran IV is mostly the same as Fortran 66. 
> > 
> > And functions and subroutines was (per public sources - before 
> > my time) added in Fortran II in 1958. 
> > 
> > So not quite as bad. 
> > 
> > Anything text sucked big time in Fortran IV/66 but climate 
> > model should not be impacted by that. 
> >
> It’s possible that, just as today, “seasoned” (I.e. older, perhaps set in 
> their ways) programmers in the 1960’s and 1970’s may not have used 
> new-dangled features like IF/THEN/ELSE or more modern loop constructs. And 
> may actually have liked assigned or computed GOTOs, three-branch IF, etc. 
> 
> Or they may have been constrained by out-of-date compilers on their 
> platforms.

Here's a statement from NASA GISS regarding Model E.  Which has been open source for years, now, if you want to take a look.   Conceptually like most such models they're simple, pave the earth with pizza boxes stacked about 20 high these days, IIRC.  The pizza boxes shrink and the number of them that are stacked increase as supercomputers increase in power, improving resolution.  Understanding the model physics is, ummm, a tad more complex :).  Also some of that increasing power generally is devoted to more complex physical modeling which works against how many more pizza boxes you can have in your model in reasonable time.

Anyway, after a prologue pointing out that it has been around awhile:

"While much of the subsequent reworking of the model has led to a reduction in these historical influences, some parts of the model still hark back to the days of punch cards, FORTRAN 66 and line printer output. A charitable interpretation would be that while embracing the new (FORTRAN 90/95, multi-processing, netcdf, etc.), we endeavour to maintain some of the more harmless GISS traditions (which some might call eccentricities) in a spirit of continuity with those who have previously worked on the model. On the other hand, some of those early decisions (for instance regarding diagnostics, or conservation properties) turned out to be very far-sighted and are a principle reason why the GISS series of models continue to play a useful and important role in the world of GCM simulations."