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I don't think that's the case, seems a little too extreme to think that. I believe the central point of someone not directly enrolled with programming as an act

I don't think that's the case, seems a little too extreme to think that. I believe the central point of someone not directly enrolled with programming as an actual job (or as a hobby taken seriously) picking Fortran over C/C++ has to do with the features it has out-of-the-box, or at least that are more apparent from the surface of language knowledge. Even if it takes one afternoon to implement a certain feature, would scientists WANT or NEED to do that? Don't get me wrong, this is probably an opinion I would defend if it were exclusively related to programmers being "too lazy to learn a new language", but this is a different learning purpose.

justin_vanw 9y ago
I can't agree, comparing two languages purely by a superficial "this one lets me write code like this out of the box" ignores everything that matters. Lets say I wanted to write a web blog server. One language has "import blog; blog.run()" and I am up and running instantly. Another language makes me install a blog library and some other side stuff, and choose a webserver. The point is it isn't just built right in. Which language is better for writing web blog software? The answer is, you have literally no idea from what I just told you. My analysis is insanely superficial and meaningless. Presumably, if I am going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours in some coding environment, what is 'built in with no effort' matters somewhat on hour 0, but virtually not at all by hour 200. Professional scientists presumably spend thousands of hours on this stuff, it's really not too much to ask that they become somewhat competent with the tools they are using.