Customer Reviews

C++ for FORTRAN Programmers

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

First, let me say that this does seem to be a perfectly respectable C++ book.
One could do worse, and it does not seem that knowing Fortran is a prerequisite.

It's the "... For Fortran Programmers" part that is disappointing. I'm a member of the ostensible target demographic -- someone who has programmed for decades off and on in Fortran and is looking to learn the C (/ C++) language -- and this book sounded like exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, it did not live up to this expectation. The Fortran related material occupies only the first 20% of the book (plus a brief appendix), essentially the plain-old-C chapters.

The "for Fortran programmers" content is mostly concerned with those areas where there are direct equivalences between the two languages that can be summarized neatly in tables (e.g. Fortran's "double precision" is the same as C's "double"). This kind of info is useful, but an experienced Fortran programmer will easily pick it up anyway. When it comes to more complicated issues such as control structures (IF, etc.), the emphasis seems to be to present Fortran equivalents of C structures, rather than the reverse. I guess this could be seen as using the presumed Fortran background to explicate a C language description, but I'd think most Fortran programmers learning C will be thinking the reverse, "I know how to do <X> in Fortran, how do I achieve the same thing in C?" Compounding this, the assumption seems to be that the Fortran programmed in is Fortran 90, which is far from universally adopted (especially with the immense amount of legacy code in use).

Of course, a lot of the C++ language simply has no direct equivalent in Fortran. But if this were really written from the start for Fortran programmers there should be specific discussion showing how to do things that a Fortran programmer finds clumsy (such as matrix manipulation) more smoothly with the "++" part of C++, and the book should use examples drawn from scientific programming (which has been the primary domain of Fortran programmers).

I am not saying this book should be a simple translation manual, but it should start with what the Fortran programmer already knows and build from there, and deal with problems that the Fortran programmer is typically interested in.

In summary, this is a decent C++ book, but the Fortran content seems to be a clumsy afterthought, grafted on for marketing reasons.

This is the only text I know of that tries to take the Fortran programmer directly into C++. This attempt was a poor effort at best. Ira's other book C++ for C Programmers was highly recommended to me to learn C++. Being a Fortran programmer and not a C programmer, I thought Ira would have made this book at a comparable level. Instead he used the C++ for C Programmers text with a few changes for Fortran syntax. This shows a minimal effort on Ira's part, very disappointing! The reader of this book needs a good background in C to understand it. And if your C background is good, get the C++ for C Programmers book. C++ for Fortran Programmers should be rewritten for programmers with only a Fortran background as the title indicates. Then, I believe this text could fill a unique and important gap in the literature. A second issue I have with this text is Ira's writing style. He writes at a high level thus you need to be able to read at that level. That's all fine, but then he needs to be a competent writer of the English language. Ira's technical writing fails miserably here (showing short, weak examples in no way makes up for this!). My advice for Fortran only programmers is get a short introductory book on C and then get a short (introductory?) book on C++. Your basic programming skills should easily cover anything else. Ira should have done something like this when he wrote the book.

I feel the title of the book is extremely misleading. With no mention of "common", no discussion of "subroutine", or "equivalence" this book is not suitable for a Fortran programmer who wishes to learn C++ by converting statements from F. to C. Nor are the C++ concepts placed in the context of Fortran. Author could write a book on every language for C++ programmers with minimal effort - just include a few short simple programs in the other language. Don't buy if you expect to benefit from your Fortran experiance.

The "Book Description" in the Amazon.com webpage is a gross overstatement. At most, 10 pages of the book are dedicated to an extremely brief address of how to convert or translate a Fortran 90 program to C++, which falls so far short of what is required that words fail me. Fortunately, I can return the book to source with refund. It does not deserve even a 1 star rating.

This book was a complete waste of money. I'm lucky that I was able to return the book for a full refund. THe book is just poorly written with very few examples. Not worth your time.

I was looking for such book five years ago. Now the graphics came down to earth with so many way and computer languages.
I want to congradualte the author for such thought and work. It still useful for many old and old people.

I wite this to balance the one review that was so negative and unfair. Why - the book is not a book on FORTRAN. It is a book on learning C++ and is one of three in this series which includes C++ for Pascal Programmers and C++ for C Programmers. These other two books get between 3 and 5 stars. What you get here is roughly the same material and some indication for those programmers who start with a FORTRAN background how corresponding C++ features work. If the lack of FORTRAN expertise bugs you, but you still desire a good book to migrate to C++ let me suggest Object-Oriented Programming Using C++:2nd edition.