Language Barrier

The SEPlib base is written in C, but historically people at SEP have done most of their coding in Fortran. Most students program exclusively in one language and choose that language early at SEP. Fortran is the most common choice because

• all of the code in Jon's books is written in the Fortran dialect Ratfor and
• it is the language most students know when they arrive at SEP.

Once a student feels comfortable in a language he is apt not to change, especially from Fortran to C or C++ where many concepts are extremely foreign. As a result SEP's C++ projects were inaccessible to large portion of the students and these students ideas, operators, and solvers could not be contributed to the project.