Why is FORTRAN cool again?

[winsteps]

That old "real programmers" document is talking about Fortran 77 or earlier. Since then, there have been Fortrans 90, 95, 2003. These now include all those structured features which make it difficult for end-user mathematicians to match the source code with their algebra and flow-charts. But current Fortran compilers can compile original F77 programs! Fortran features backward-compatibility. I maintain Fortran programs originally written in the 1980s for obsolete computers with obsolete operating systems, but the programs continue to work correctly. The only real change is that the user-interface needs tweaking with each migration to a new operating system. Hardware comes and goes. Operating systems come and go. But some software needs to go on forever .... :) The biggest problem for long-term Fortran maintenance is that data files become inaccessible as their storage media become obsolete. Paper tape, punched cards, big disks, data cassettes, zip drives, 8-inch diskettes, 5.25 inch diskettes, now 3.5 inch diskettes ... It is a race against technological innovation to move the data from one storage medium to another. And don't trust other people to look after your data and back-up files for you. They can be gone like a cloud in the winds of time.

Mike L.

[Mark_Wallace]

When exactly was the three-way IF statement not cool?

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

[Mustafa Ismail Mustafa]

:sigh: Do you realize the way they measure language usage is just silly beyond silly? It's like saying world wide corned beef production is up 3000% because 7 penguins died due to red devil attacks. Its all a farce I tell you and this has to come up in the lounge every so often. I think Rama Guru would back me up on this.

If the post was helpful, please vote, eh! Current activities: Book: Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?

[VE2]

IF (FORTRAN.EQ.COOL)THEN IMBACK=YES! ELSE CSHARP=RULES

73

[Dan Neely]

The number of hits in google, yahoo, etc, etc. :rolleyes: IIRC they massage it somewhat, but that's ultimately what it comes down to.

3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18

[Super Lloyd]

mm... C++ should be before C then, as it is so much more error prone! :laugh:

A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station.... _________________________________________________________ My programs never have bugs, they just develop random features.

[T M Gray]

Back in my college days the people who took FORTRAN classes were in the geopgraphy department. Considering how huge "location" was as a topic at SxSW (and everywhere else) maybe that is the driver.

[dpminusa]

Functional Programming and Parallelism Support perhaps. http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/PUBS/CACMcols/cacmJun10.pdf[^] Microsoft has introduced F# for this. Several others exist. Some dialects of Fortran may still be ahead in completness and performance. Seems plausible to me.

"Coding for fun and profit ... mostly fun"

[Fabio Franco]

Oh my... It is a stereotype... I thought I was lazy by getting to work late... Good thing this is a good thing :-D

[snavece]

Some of us still use computers to crunch numbers and FORTRAN is hard to beat. And as one of the previous posters said the old code still runs. I know of 40+ year old code that is still running.

Clayton

[Robert Surtees]

Ah, a connoisseur. It's really the only statement you need.

[englebart]

I concur. Parallel is all the rage. Fortran for the Crays and IBM vector processors had parallel extensions 25 years ago!

[dpminusa]

I started with Fortran II about then. I just downloaded and installed Fortran 95 from silverfrost. It comes with Visual Express. There is serious work being done with this product. It is free form with object support, .NET, etc., etc. If you are interested http://www.silverfrost.com/default.aspx[^]

"Coding for fun and profit ... mostly fun"

[trshively]

If that is so.. then the stats reflect the most popular language, that is being learned at the moment. I was under the illusion they reflected the most popular languages, that are desired in the job market at the moment. I also noticed, in the list of real programmers, qualifications, that it didn't mention anything about taking full advantage of the the Ballmer Peak.[^]

[James Lonero]

Man, that's a mean sounding hockey game just to get that Irish food.

[CDMTJX]

Three-way IF statement became uncool when FORTRAN-77 introduced IF THEN ELSE statements. (I helped implement them for FORTRAN on TOPS-10/20, which was written in Bliss-10...)

[Robert Surtees]

You have it backwards. It became cooler when that new-fangled IF-THEN-ELSE verbosity was introduced.

[firegryphon]

Fortran is never cool, but it is still very very useful.

ragnaroknrol: Yes, but comparing a rabid wolverine gnawing on your face while stabbing you with a fountain pen to Vista is likely to make the wolverine look good, so it isn't exactly that big of a compliment.

[firegryphon]

Those of us that are required to come with interplanetary trajectories to other planets often care about such archaic languages :)

ragnaroknrol: Yes, but comparing a rabid wolverine gnawing on your face while stabbing you with a fountain pen to Vista is likely to make the wolverine look good, so it isn't exactly that big of a compliment.

[firegryphon]

But gosh, its so much nicer if you still have all the source code so you don't have to run it in a DOS shell or worse find an ancient sparc that still runs.  I end up recompiling code on more recent compilers for some of my coworkers and they are just flaberghasted at how much faster it runs (10-20x) under newer compilers.

ragnaroknrol: Yes, but comparing a rabid wolverine gnawing on your face while stabbing you with a fountain pen to Vista is likely to make the wolverine look good, so it isn't exactly that big of a compliment.