On Tue, 2025-01-14 at 15:28 +0100, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 06:51:15PM -0800, Van Snyder via cctalk > wrote: > > On Mon, 2025-01-13 at 17:16 -0800, Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk > > wrote: > > > FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line > > > numbers) and > > > semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string > > > support). > > Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956. > > So what, though? "The Intel® Fortran Compiler 2025" just uses the > LLVM > backend, as does flang, the other contender, so the resulting code is > going > to perform much the same as anything else using LLVM.
Intel ifort, which one can still get but is no longer supported, used Intel's in-house back-end. > The only good reason to use Fortran today is if you have a large > legacy > codebase in Fortran, or are targetting a platform which is not > supported by > LLVM. Arguably the same applies to C. I guess that explains why the NASA climate models being developed at Goddard are all in Fortran, and all of the data analysis codes for many Earth-observing satellites are developed in Fortran > A bad reason to pick Fortran or C is having been taught it at school > and > then making no effort to update one's skills at any point in the > intervening > decades. This assumes that your professors are teaching Fortran 66 instead of Fortran 2025. I'd be interested to know what you believe its defects to be.
