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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/13/2022 8:55 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 4/13/2022 7:04 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> On 4/13/22 3:10 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>  From https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/13/climate_mit_fortran/
>>> |CLiMA made the determination that old climate models, many of which 
>>> were
>>> |built 50 years ago and coded in Fortran, had to go if there was 
>>> going to be
>>> |any progress toward better climate models. Now that he's working at 
>>> MIT on
>>> |the CGC project, he's realized that "traditional climate models are 
>>> in a
>>> |language [MIT] students can't even read."
>>>
>>> Can't read the latest symbol-based (instead of word-based) language
>>> without lots of study ? Ok, that's a fair thing to say.
>>>
>>> But Fortran ??? Wow.
>>
>> Um, the code written in the 1960s and 1970s as mentioned in the article
>> was probably not Fortran 77 or even Fortran 66.  Unless I'm in a Star
>> Trek episode and 1977 actually came before the 1960s and most of the
>> 1970s.  Fortran IV was limited to 6-character identifiers and used
>> Hollerith constants. Functions and subroutines were not available so you
>> would tend to see programs tens of thousands of lines long with GOTO all
>> over the place.  It was unreadable to me when learning VAX Fortran in
>> 1983, so I can sympathize with someone who knows C++ or Java trying to
>> make sense of it now.
> 
> What's so hard about GOTo?
> 
> Yeah, it can produce disgusting code, but the is a difference between 
> "able to read" and "able to follow".

A few GOTO's used in a structured is usually not a problem.

A lot of GOTO's jumping forth and back usually makes the code
very hard to follow.

Arne