Why is FORTRAN cool again?

[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.

[Robert Surtees]

Just remember to use meters not feet. :)

[firegryphon]

Pshaw... we use astronomical units (AU) or kilometers.  All other units are inferior, even if they are in same metric family.

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.

[Mark_Wallace]

CDMTJX wrote:

Three-way IF statement became uncool when FORTRAN-77 introduced IF THEN ELSE statements.

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