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> Now you need to do a follow on study to see how much science the 'rival' group does with a more modern codebase than your 'legacy' group does. I would guess
by sampo 9y ago
> Now you need to do a follow on study to see how much science the 'rival' group does with a more modern codebase than your 'legacy' group does.
I would guess that a C++ codebase written by PhD students, not by seasoned C++ experts, is more complicated and much slower to debug, than a corresponding Fortran codebase.
- adrianN 9y agoWell, that Fortran codebase probably also was written in large parts by PhD students, not export Fortran programmers.
- sitkack 9y agoC++ is a more efficient language to write difficult to track down bugs in than Fortran.
- sampo 9y agoFortran is a much simpler and safer language than C++. And faster to learn. Fortran is even somewhat simpler than C or Java, whereas C++ is probably the most complicated language in the known universe. So especially in the hands of non-experts, Fortran should produce less bugs.
- aswanson 9y agoFunny as hell. Perl, though.
- HelloNurse 9y agoC++ is complex. Perl is complicated.
- ska 9y agoThey are both typically pretty bad - but there are many more ways to shoot yourself in the foot in c++
- Turing_Machine 9y agoCan verify that if you give numerical methods people C you may get wonders like (e.g.) main() functions that are 30 pages long. No, I'm not kidding. I shudder to think what they'd have done with C++. :-)
- hzhou321 9y agoDon't be so assumptive that a 30 page long main function is bad code. The code still can be well organized and readable. Function is not the only method to organize code. Knuth's literate programming for example is invented to better organize code. Function has its side effects. It's use as only once case is really questionable, justified by lack of other means.
- tragomaskhalos 9y agoThe very fact that the article itself, with a completely straight face, has all that malloc nonsense in there as "the way you have to do it in C++" is very telling of how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick with C++ unless you are au fait with the history of the language and its evolution to better more modern idioms