[Info-vax] And another one bites the dust....

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/16/2022 9:41 PM, dthi... at gmail.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 8:05:01 AM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon
>> wrote: National Computing Group West Mifflin, PA
>> 
>> Document, plan and execute the modernization of Fortran
>> applications running on OpenVMS systems to a virtualized Windows
>> Server environment.
> 
> I'd like to point out to everyone that this posting specifically
> calls out modernizing FORTRAN, which CANNOT be done on OpenVMS, as
> the OpenVMS FORTRAN compiler is over 25 years old. The commercial and
> scientific FORTRAN code base out there is massive, as is the
> commercial COBOL code base. I am aware of many companies modernizing
> their FORTRAN code bases to use the new object oriented methods of
> the later FORTRAN standards, which can be compiled with the Intel
> Fortran compiler and the later gfortran compilers.

It talks about "modernization of Fortran applications", which can really
be move Fortran code as it to newer platform, upgrade from old Fortran
to newer Fortran or rewrite from Fortran to newer language.

> I've complained to both HPE and VSI for years that you can't attract
> new developers to the platform, and thus grow your customer base, if
> you don't provide modern software development tools and tool chains.

Yes.

Existing customers need compatibility.

New customers needs modern languages, tools, libraries, frameworks
etc. that tyhe industry expect today.

> VSI Fortran is pretty much just rebranded HPE Fortran (FORTRAN-95
> standard, and not a complete implementation of it either). Later
> FORTRAN standards (2003, 2008, 2108) have fully embraced object
> oriented code practices and C interoperability.

I am slightly surprised that you say Fortran shops embracing OO - I
would sort of have expected most of them to keep existing code
in Fortran but do new stuff not tightly integrated with old stuff
in a different language likely OO.

Arne