9 ms·

Show HN: A Fortran web framework

227 points by mapmeld 10y ago

danpalmer 10y ago
Also relevant: https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair
- elcapitan 10y ago
  The views are a little disappointing, using just plain mustache style. Shouldn't a cobol web view have something like HEAD DIVISION META-TAGS SECTION. BODY DIVISION.
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    I know it runs on Apache, but the install scripts should be written in JCL, just because.
  - twic 10y ago
    DIV DIVISION?!
    - elcapitan 10y ago
      HR DEPARTMENT.
- nathell 10y ago
  Fun fact: the framework's author [1] is a member of the governing board of a major Polish political party (Razem). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zandberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zandberg
- kagamine 10y ago
  There is a webframework called Z WebPortal from a US company, Zortec Intl. that has a COBOL-like backend that will run 'real' COLBOL code too, with a js layer and xml to draw the output in the browser as html. It is proprietary, but very fast and the backend code is much simplified over COBOL. Writing to a log file looks like: fd ?logthis-txt reclen 80 def logthis-usr gp 80 logthis-date an 10 logthis-time an 8 open extend logthis using '/var/log/logfile.txt' on error next sentence else display date lj upon logthis-date call GETIME using logthis-time move usrid to logthis-usr write logthis close logthis. You can see that a lot of the (unnecessary) typing done in COBOL has been removed. It has its limitations as most web-frameworks do, but if you have mainframe COBOL and want to present it in the browser with fancy colors and graphics it has more pros than cons.
ha470 10y ago
An accomplishment, certainly, but... http://i.imgur.com/TnQRX6v.gif http://i.imgur.com/TnQRX6v.gif
projectramo 10y ago
I would love it if these projects were accompanied by a little blog post stating who the person is, why they decided to do it etc. for projects where it is obviously a labor of love. Especially because of the effort it would take to get this working on a "dead" language. Like who are you? How did you decide to work on this for the pure joy of it? Why not Cobol? Why a web framework?
- chejazi 10y ago
  Some digging uncovered mapmeld's appreciation for the Fortran community on Github https://medium.com/@mapmeld/fortran-culture-on-github-a257dd595061 https://medium.com/@mapmeld/fortran-culture-on-github-a257dd...
  - noobermin 10y ago
    >It could be about scientific coders’ culture versus web developers like me. That's basically it. Scientific programmers are from a different era and a different culture.
    - pbowyer 10y ago
      Also, their focus is more on what they can do with the code, not the code as an end in itself. When discussing pull requests and changes, having less ego involved makes a big difference.
- cjslep 10y ago
  > "dead" language In the world of traditional engineering, you will still encounter senior PE's that pump out Fortran. Luckily, it usually isn't fixed form. Also revisiting older projects can also mean visiting Fortran, and sometimes that can be fixed form (looking at you, wind hazard modelling of tornadic winds for nuclear powerplants).
  - sanarothe 10y ago
    I love it I'm imagining a sixty year old dude, revered by all around him, who spend the last forty honing his fixed-form Fortran skills. Young engineers gather around him just to marvel at this masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DTpQ4Kk2wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DTpQ4Kk2wA
haifeng 10y ago
Just because you can?
- ronnier 10y ago
  For some reason I've been seeing more and more Fortran lately. Maybe it's the trendy thing to do.
  - phamilton 10y ago
    Honestly, High Performance Fortran has really nice support for parallel arrays. For computational programming I see a lot of value.
    - valarauca1 10y ago
      The issue is what you give up. Yes the FORTRAN compiler/runtime is fast but concurrent primitives weren't added until FORTRAN03, and recursion wasn't fully supported until FORTRAN90 [1]. It hides almost all the implementation details from the programmer. Fortran is a really good language for number crunching. Academics who don't know how to code can build very fast number crunching tools without really any CS or hardware knowledge. This the target use case and target audience. If you want to do low level system things with it, it'll be painful. [1] Some fortran70 compilers had limited support for recursion it wasn't added to the official language standard until 20 years later tho.
      - colechristensen 10y ago
        >The issue is what you give up. This is the feature, not a bug. The purpose of fortran and why it is a fast efficient tool for scientists to write software is is exactly that it hides implementation details and is a bad systems language. It allows you to define the important math parts of your program and hides the implementation part exactly so the compiler has a lot more power to optimize.
  - shepardrtc 10y ago
    I got into it a couple years ago pretty heavily just for kicks and found that it was actually a pretty fun language if you're doing lots of math, especially matrices. I wish people would use it more for libraries, but I would be lying if I said you couldn't write something just as fast in C or C++ with a little bit more work. That being said, its actually a great language for people who just want to spit out some number crunching code.
cpr 10y ago
Seeing this gave me a subtle but definite frisson of nostalgia for Fortran (first language, learned in late 60's).
k__ 10y ago
Reminds me of: https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair
supernintendo 10y ago
Nice work! That home page, while admittedly simple, renders incredibly fast. Have you done any benchmarks / performance comparisons to other web frameworks?
- mapmeld 10y ago
  No, not yet. It ought to be comparable to C++ in most cases. The difficult part is extending Fortran to do something that you want / hasn't been shared yet on the web.
mhd 10y ago
I'm mostly used to Fortran 77 and that was ages ago, that actually looks quite readable...
jchomali 10y ago
I am definitely going to try this! Would love to see a bit more about the creator!
- mapmeld 10y ago
  Thanks! You can find my name on GitHub and Google around to find more info / e-mail address
nickpsecurity 10y ago
For those wondering why it's used, here's a write-up I found on Eric Raymond's blog comparing Fortran and C: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-2.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-2.html Some comparisons are dated. However, I think the older variants still have advantages in readability, more clear semantics, semantics closer to algorithm itself (esp mathematical functions), less guessing by compiler for optimizations, and maybe a few others. Those I listed seem to still be advantages over C in general or as it's commonly used.
- Trombone12 10y ago
  Also of note is that the implicit typing system of Fortran is held up as an advantage (although a bit reluctantly)
ufmace 10y ago
This reminds me of the time I actually found myself charged with integrating a chunk of Fortran code compiled into a Windows DLL with an Excel sheet via VBA. The VBA side was straightforward if a little icky, but handling strings in Fortran was really giving me headaches. Documentation on Fortran, even down to basic syntax, seemed inconsistent and hard to find online. I think I got the project mostly working before I left that company for unrelated reasons.
antidaily 10y ago
Finally!
mswetcunt 10y ago
https://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7I https://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttp...
WorldMaker 10y ago
Given Ruby on Rails, COBOL on COGS, silly naming pattern, I'm a bit disappointed this isn't called something like Fortran on Flumes.
rlcarino 10y ago
Hello, I wrote the 'fortran+fastcgi+nginx' thingy. It has evolved into https://github.com/rlcarino/heeds https://github.com/rlcarino/heeds. Production live runs (and a little blog post about it) may be found at http://heeds.csu.edu.ph http://heeds.csu.edu.ph. Some students from a university connect to the runs with their Android phones without cell data cost via Facebook's Free Basics which is available in that part of the world. Usage instructions for students are in the FAQ of https://www.facebook.com/groups/csuheeds/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/csuheeds/. Why do it? It is a consulting gig. Ric Carino

227 points by mapmeld 10y ago

danpalmer 10y ago

Also relevant: https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair

elcapitan 10y ago
The views are a little disappointing, using just plain mustache style. Shouldn't a cobol web view have something like HEAD DIVISION META-TAGS SECTION. BODY DIVISION.
- ourmandave 10y ago
  I know it runs on Apache, but the install scripts should be written in JCL, just because.
- twic 10y ago
  DIV DIVISION?!
  - elcapitan 10y ago
    HR DEPARTMENT.
nathell 10y ago
Fun fact: the framework's author [1] is a member of the governing board of a major Polish political party (Razem). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zandberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zandberg
kagamine 10y ago
There is a webframework called Z WebPortal from a US company, Zortec Intl. that has a COBOL-like backend that will run 'real' COLBOL code too, with a js layer and xml to draw the output in the browser as html. It is proprietary, but very fast and the backend code is much simplified over COBOL. Writing to a log file looks like: fd ?logthis-txt reclen 80 def logthis-usr gp 80 logthis-date an 10 logthis-time an 8 open extend logthis using '/var/log/logfile.txt' on error next sentence else display date lj upon logthis-date call GETIME using logthis-time move usrid to logthis-usr write logthis close logthis. You can see that a lot of the (unnecessary) typing done in COBOL has been removed. It has its limitations as most web-frameworks do, but if you have mainframe COBOL and want to present it in the browser with fancy colors and graphics it has more pros than cons.

ha470 10y ago

An accomplishment, certainly, but... http://i.imgur.com/TnQRX6v.gif http://i.imgur.com/TnQRX6v.gif

projectramo 10y ago

I would love it if these projects were accompanied by a little blog post stating who the person is, why they decided to do it etc. for projects where it is obviously a labor of love. Especially because of the effort it would take to get this working on a "dead" language. Like who are you? How did you decide to work on this for the pure joy of it? Why not Cobol? Why a web framework?

chejazi 10y ago
Some digging uncovered mapmeld's appreciation for the Fortran community on Github https://medium.com/@mapmeld/fortran-culture-on-github-a257dd595061 https://medium.com/@mapmeld/fortran-culture-on-github-a257dd...
- noobermin 10y ago
  >It could be about scientific coders’ culture versus web developers like me. That's basically it. Scientific programmers are from a different era and a different culture.
  - pbowyer 10y ago
    Also, their focus is more on what they can do with the code, not the code as an end in itself. When discussing pull requests and changes, having less ego involved makes a big difference.
cjslep 10y ago
> "dead" language In the world of traditional engineering, you will still encounter senior PE's that pump out Fortran. Luckily, it usually isn't fixed form. Also revisiting older projects can also mean visiting Fortran, and sometimes that can be fixed form (looking at you, wind hazard modelling of tornadic winds for nuclear powerplants).
- sanarothe 10y ago
  I love it I'm imagining a sixty year old dude, revered by all around him, who spend the last forty honing his fixed-form Fortran skills. Young engineers gather around him just to marvel at this masterpiece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DTpQ4Kk2wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DTpQ4Kk2wA

haifeng 10y ago

Just because you can?

ronnier 10y ago
For some reason I've been seeing more and more Fortran lately. Maybe it's the trendy thing to do.
- phamilton 10y ago
  Honestly, High Performance Fortran has really nice support for parallel arrays. For computational programming I see a lot of value.
  - valarauca1 10y ago
    The issue is what you give up. Yes the FORTRAN compiler/runtime is fast but concurrent primitives weren't added until FORTRAN03, and recursion wasn't fully supported until FORTRAN90 [1]. It hides almost all the implementation details from the programmer. Fortran is a really good language for number crunching. Academics who don't know how to code can build very fast number crunching tools without really any CS or hardware knowledge. This the target use case and target audience. If you want to do low level system things with it, it'll be painful. [1] Some fortran70 compilers had limited support for recursion it wasn't added to the official language standard until 20 years later tho.
    - colechristensen 10y ago
      >The issue is what you give up. This is the feature, not a bug. The purpose of fortran and why it is a fast efficient tool for scientists to write software is is exactly that it hides implementation details and is a bad systems language. It allows you to define the important math parts of your program and hides the implementation part exactly so the compiler has a lot more power to optimize.
- shepardrtc 10y ago
  I got into it a couple years ago pretty heavily just for kicks and found that it was actually a pretty fun language if you're doing lots of math, especially matrices. I wish people would use it more for libraries, but I would be lying if I said you couldn't write something just as fast in C or C++ with a little bit more work. That being said, its actually a great language for people who just want to spit out some number crunching code.

cpr 10y ago

Seeing this gave me a subtle but definite frisson of nostalgia for Fortran (first language, learned in late 60's).

k__ 10y ago

Reminds me of: https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair https://github.com/azac/cobol-on-wheelchair

supernintendo 10y ago

Nice work! That home page, while admittedly simple, renders incredibly fast. Have you done any benchmarks / performance comparisons to other web frameworks?

mapmeld 10y ago
No, not yet. It ought to be comparable to C++ in most cases. The difficult part is extending Fortran to do something that you want / hasn't been shared yet on the web.

mhd 10y ago

I'm mostly used to Fortran 77 and that was ages ago, that actually looks quite readable...

jchomali 10y ago

I am definitely going to try this! Would love to see a bit more about the creator!

mapmeld 10y ago
Thanks! You can find my name on GitHub and Google around to find more info / e-mail address

nickpsecurity 10y ago

For those wondering why it's used, here's a write-up I found on Eric Raymond's blog comparing Fortran and C: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-2.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-2.html Some comparisons are dated. However, I think the older variants still have advantages in readability, more clear semantics, semantics closer to algorithm itself (esp mathematical functions), less guessing by compiler for optimizations, and maybe a few others. Those I listed seem to still be advantages over C in general or as it's commonly used.

Trombone12 10y ago
Also of note is that the implicit typing system of Fortran is held up as an advantage (although a bit reluctantly)

ufmace 10y ago

This reminds me of the time I actually found myself charged with integrating a chunk of Fortran code compiled into a Windows DLL with an Excel sheet via VBA. The VBA side was straightforward if a little icky, but handling strings in Fortran was really giving me headaches. Documentation on Fortran, even down to basic syntax, seemed inconsistent and hard to find online. I think I got the project mostly working before I left that company for unrelated reasons.

antidaily 10y ago

Finally!

mswetcunt 10y ago

https://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7I https://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttps://youtu.be/EZa6Nv1KH7Ihttp...

WorldMaker 10y ago

Given Ruby on Rails, COBOL on COGS, silly naming pattern, I'm a bit disappointed this isn't called something like Fortran on Flumes.

rlcarino 10y ago

Hello, I wrote the 'fortran+fastcgi+nginx' thingy. It has evolved into https://github.com/rlcarino/heeds https://github.com/rlcarino/heeds. Production live runs (and a little blog post about it) may be found at http://heeds.csu.edu.ph http://heeds.csu.edu.ph. Some students from a university connect to the runs with their Android phones without cell data cost via Facebook's Free Basics which is available in that part of the world. Usage instructions for students are in the FAQ of https://www.facebook.com/groups/csuheeds/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/csuheeds/. Why do it? It is a consulting gig. Ric Carino