3 ms·

Can you go into a bit about what specifically is missing? A lot of the people who work on the compiler/library support for this stuff aren't the primary consum

• m_mueller 10y ago
  Basically, OPs article gives a good overview on what scientists want out of a language used for large scale numeric simulations. 1.) Multi-dim arrays supporting array math, slicing and flexible indexing, sizeof always known (internally solved through lookup tables). 2.) Fast-by-default rather than safe-by-default. A safe language is useless if it gives 2x or more runtime overhead. Make it safe where it doesn't give you any performance penalty (i.e. compile-time checks), otherwise make the default performant or leave the choice to the programmer. Example: Pass-by-reference as default, no GC. Essentially, I don't think Fortran will be replaced any time soon - maybe strong AI that can program all of this stuff from pure math specification will be here sooner than a Fortran replacement. To everyone not understanding this, read the article again. There's been a huge amount of effort going into this language the last 20 or so years - almost more than justified by the size of the HPC market, which is visible by all the compilers lagging behind the specs. If you want to help, go and improve gfortran (e.g. with better GPU support so people don't need the lagging PGI or locked down Cray compilers anymore).