On Friday, Nov. 18, the SC11 conference wrapped up with an HPC Analyst Crossfire panel session. It was a fast-paced discussion on the technical challenges facing the industry, and I think Addison Snell and panelists Don Becker, Earl Dodd, Keith Gray, and Peter Ungaro did a great job.

We recorded Analyst Crossfire and I hope to have the edited program up in the next week or so. In the meantime, Brock Palen has already posted some of his thoughts on the session.

A topic that became a running but serious gag of the panel was that FORTRAN was going to continue to be the language of choice for applications. How will FORTRAN be taught? I overheard someone say “It is simpler to teach a physicist to program, than to teach a programer physics.” I think this is an important idea when looking at what drives language selection in academic research.

As for me (Rich Brueckner) this all started back in May when I entered the Analyst Crossfire panel submission for SC11. Addison and I would like this kind of panel to continue in future SC conferences, so if you were there, please let them know if you think it was worthwhile at panels @ info.supercomputing.org.