Re: [Caml-list] SISAL (Was: report describing optimization of numerical computing...)

[Tom _ <tom7ca@yahoo.com>]

SISAL was is experiment in language design.  To
replace something like Fortran, you need a bit
more resources than a project at a government
lab.  The SISAL project didn't have the resources
to create the libraries and tools necessary to
replace Fortran, and that was clear to everybody.
It took more than 20 years to come out with Fortran90,
and even it hasn't replaced Fortran77 a decade later.
Many other excellent projects at government
labs have languished for lack of funding.

The ideas that went into the language should
be judged on their own.

Tom.

PS: I was not associated with the SISAL project
other than as an occaional user of their software.

--- Florian Hars <hars@bik-gmbh.de> wrote:
> On Thu, May 31, 2001 at 09:10:24PM -0700, Tom _
> wrote:
> > I'd recommend also taking a look at SISAL
> > (http://www.llnl.gov/sisal/).
> 
> I think SISAL is *the* premiere example of why
> scientific computing
> is still avoiding modern languages and favors
> FORTRAN instead:
> 
> | While trying to retrieve the URL: 
> |
>
http://redhook.llnl.gov/iscr/projects/crg/sisal.tutorial/
> |
> | The following error was encountered:
> | Unable to determine IP address from host name for
> redhook.llnl.gov 
> 
> | While trying to retrieve the URL: 
> |
>
ftp://sisal.llnl.gov/pub/sisal/Small.Sisal.Interpreter.dir
> |
> | The following error was encountered:
> | Unable to determine IP address from host name for
> sisal.llnl.gov
> 
> It was a one shot project with no long term
> perspective, even the
> code is gone and none of the official distribution
> sites do exist
> any more. The lifetime of the language didn't even
> span the
> lifetime of a typical high energy physics
> experiment.  A physicist who
> had bet his professional success on SISAL would be
> turning burgers
> at McDonalds by now.
> 
> Yours, Florian Hars.
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