Tamas K Papp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I found some bottlenecks in my R code with Rprof. First I wanted to > rewrite them in C, but a colleague keeps suggesting that I learn > Fortran, so maybe this is the time to do it... > > 1) I hear bad things about Fortran. Sure, F77 looks archaic, but > F90/95 seems nicer. Is it worth learning, especially when I plan to > use it mainly from R? Dusting off my C knowledge would take a bit of > time too, and I never liked C that much.
I'll answer this from the perspective of someone who uses Fortran 95 regularly. It is a modern language, far more reliable and flexible than Fortran 77 and quite well suited to most scientific problems. I do think it's worth learning, particularly if C is not to your taste. Two free compilers for Fortran 95 are available. It seems that g95 is complete, while gfortran is nearing completion. There are also several high-quality commercial compilers, some of which are free under certain operating systems and/or conditions and others of which (Lahey) are quite inexpensive if one is willing to work from the command line or one's own editor. I can't address questions of R interoperability -- not something I've done. -- Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC * Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise. * Any use of tradenames does not constitute a NOAA endorsement. ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
