Sorry to hear it was such a struggle for you, I didn't mean to be condescending in my previous comment. I guess from your comment Fortran isn't as easy to learn

Sorry to hear it was such a struggle for you, I didn't mean to be condescending in my previous comment. I guess from your comment Fortran isn't as easy to learn as I thought - I'll remember that in the future. The fact that 'the standard' has a different meaning in Fortran compared to other languages is indeed frustrating (see 2008 standard conforming status of various compilers here [0] as of Apr 2016); however, that being said backwards compatibility is taken very seriously, so learning the basics of 90/95 isn't a waste compared to the later versions of the standard. I'm not sure why there isn't a better focus on a thorough introduction. I learned Fortran as I have learned all languages - with great frustration. Fortran hasn't been any different for me in that regard. BTW, here's a great resource I've found helpful in the past that does a great job of comparing Fortran to Python (e.g great if you have a numpy background). [1] http://www.fortran90.org/index.html http://www.fortran90.org/index.html