![]() It has been in use for over seven decades in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography and computational chemistry. But unless it can catch up with its newer rivals, it may struggle to gain many new fans, or hold on to the ones it has now.Absoft, Cray, GFortran, G95, IBM XL Fortran, Intel, Hitachi, Lahey/Fujitsu, Numerical Algorithms Group, Open Watcom, PathScale, PGI, Silverfrost, Oracle Solaris Studio, othersĪLGOL 58, BASIC, C, Chapel, CMS-2, DOPE, Fortress, PL/I, PACT I, MUMPS, IDL, Ratforįortran ( / ˈ f ɔːr t r æ n/ formerly FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.įortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing. And with decades of Fortran code still running efficiently around the world, it's not going to disappear any time soon. And, yes, nine years is an eternity in the modern software world," he says.įortran has had an incredible run, and still has its admirers. My hope is that it will be no later than 2030, and that I will have the opportunity to exploit generic programming in Fortran before I retire. "It is difficult to predict when F202Y will actually happen. And that next F202Y update might not arrive until the end of this decade – by which time Fortran will be 73 years old. However, execution handling has been dropped due to some major challenges on how to mesh exceptions with other Fortran features as well as some disagreements about specific details, according to Clune. "Python and Java are generally perceived as being slower." The future of Fortran?Ĭlune says the two "must have" features the committee is working towards include exception handling and generic programming – features available in other languages. "Fortran has exceptionally good built-in support for numerical calculations and array manipulation, which is particularly important for scientists and engineers," says Clune. "In particular, many science applications that would have once been born as small, 'throw away' Fortran applications are now started as small 'throw away' applications in Python," he says.īut Fortran still has benefits over new languages, he argues. However, Clune concedes it's becoming rarer. "There are certainly new projects being written in Fortran," says Clune, with small projects still turning into big ones: "Someone will add new features and before you know it there will be another big Fortran application out there," he says. ![]() When I talk to people who use Fortran, they tell me the number one thing they want is compilers that can run their code on modern hardware, efficiently – not just run, but take advantage of it."Īnd Clune argues that there are still new Fortran projects being developed. Some people say it's a dying language, but I think the potential is huge. ![]() "Until everything really works, they don't necessarily see the vision. "But also, people who already use Fortran don't necessarily appreciate this Python- or Julia-like approach to it," he says. "And there are some people who are seeing that there are physicists who are using Fortran, so they will like that. "There are some people who think we should just move away from Fortran," says Certik.
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