Translator

[Barry Smith]

  Seems likely to cause more grief then to save grief. 

  Fortran would be terribly difficult and fortran users are the
most stubborn about not keeping up to date.

   The problem comes from codes that have no true owner. That is,
a person who feels connected to the code and obligated to keep it
in good shape. People who write the initial code generally make good owners,
but if they leave and someone else "takes over" this person (1) is scared
of changing anything because they don't know the code and (2) does not
have much personal investment in the code so just doesn't care like
an author cares. Alas, I do not know what can be done about these
people.

   Barry


On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Matthew Knepley wrote:

>        It seems many problems could be fixed if we could just get people to
> translate their code to the next version. Is it worth it to invest time in
> a Python translator that would try to auto-upgrade software to the newest
> interface? I was thinking a sed-like thing at first, but we do have a partial
> C parser available as well. However, that version is somewhat bad in that it
> blows away spaces.
> 
>       Matt
>