You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments View context
35 points

Fortran is still a good language for some purposes I think.

And I feel the same way, C++ tries to solve the problem of having too many features by adding more features.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

Don’t get me wrong. There is still a time and a place for Fortran. And this will also likely always be the case for C++. But I’m not sure it is entirely wise to choose it if you’re creating a new project anymore.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

I’m barely competent at programming. What is the use case for Fortran, besides maintaining ancient code?

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

A lot of computational heavy tasks for science were done in Fortran at least ten years ago (and I think still are). I was told that’s mainly because Fortran has a good deal of libraries for just that, and it was widely taught in academia so this is a common ground between the older and newer generations.

I think it may be gradually superseded by Python, but I don’t know if it is

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

It was designed from its very start to be used for numerical computing. So the language it built around it and it sort of excels in that use case.

This used to be the holy bible of numerical methods, if you want to see some sample code: https://s3.amazonaws.com/nrbook.com/book_F210.html

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

You might be right, but I have heard that song a lot of times, python, java, ml, pascal, obscure webdev.languages, AI will do it, typescript, etc etc etc

I’d go with a better python than rust, you can put that “once in a lifetime asm optimized memsafe multi threaded code” in a package and just use it from python. But python has GIL and you can’t just remove it so who knows what will be the next shiny thing? Probably several languages, like for easy peasy stuff up to hardcore multi threaded memory safe stuff. Gotta push us oldtimers out in some way, right :-) ?

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

But python has GIL and you can’t just remove it so

https://docs.python.org/3/using/configure.html#cmdoption-disable-gil

The GIL appears to be slowly going away.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

… for the very reason that Fortran you can grasp in an evening.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Programming

!programming@programming.dev

Create post

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



Community stats

  • 3K

    Monthly active users

  • 876

    Posts

  • 7.4K

    Comments