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Yep. That's the community I had in mind. Particle physicists love Fortran :-) However, I'm not so sure about the speed argument anymore. And in any case for mo

by x3tm 8y ago

Yep. That's the community I had in mind. Particle physicists love Fortran :-) However, I'm not so sure about the speed argument anymore. And in any case for most applications (which are rarely big simulations) it's not worth the sacrifice of readability and modern tools IMO. Even at CERN people are re-writing some tools in python. (probably wrapping some C++ code, but still ... it's not Fortran).

atemerev 8y ago
CERN is an exception; they are famously a C++ shop. I really really don’t like C++; nearly anything else is preferable to me. Fortran is simple and math-oriented; C++ is horribly complicated and system programming oriented.
- Gene_Parmesan 8y ago
  There is a subset of C++ that is really pleasant to work with, performant, and simple-ish. Unfortunately, the community around the standards/development processes just seem to want to keep adding more, more, and more to an already top-heavy language. Every idea in language design just must be added in. When you add in the problems from legacy C compatibility, you have a language that no one person can ever hope to grasp in its entirety. I mean, it's so complex now it pushed Scott Meyers into semi-retirement. I wish they would have just dumped C legacy stuff and started over some time in the 90s. Actually, the language D is precisely what I wish C++ had become. I just wish D was more widely adopted.
- walshemj 8y ago
  when I looked a few years ago they where recruiting for Fortran
killaken2000 8y ago
A youtuber that I follow recently finished his PhD and used FORTRAN extensively. He said that he started with python and it was incredibly slow so he rewrote everything in FORTRAN. It may be that his use case (something with cloud or other weather modeling function) was just particularly well suited
- ekun 8y ago
  Any compiled language will be drastically faster than an interpretive scripting language like Python (although numpy/scipy is generally C or Fortran libraries compiled to be called by Python). Having said that I used Fortran for my PhD to do radiation simulations because I was implementing a new methodology into existing code. In my opinion Fortran is easier and safer to use for scientists with little background in coding because it was built to do math/simulations really well AND it's readable almost like psuedocode (compared with C or C++). Also, modern Fortran is object-oriented which makes building reusable tools and large packages pretty easy. Having said all of this I think a lot of the physics/nuclear/aerospace/finance community is probably transitioning into more modern languages and starting to employ people with actual CS backgrounds to build with more updated coding practices.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Did they write python correctly though? If you vectorize your algos well enough to exclusively use numpy scipy and never use python loops then python is really really fast (not because python is fast but because numpy/scipy is fast)
  - x3tm 8y ago
    Exactly. That's why I say that the speed argument is a bit obsolete by now. We can have the best of the two worlds with python! Elegance/simplicity and speed. The focus on the speed of execution also downplays two other important aspects of python: speed of writing code and possibility to visualize results easily. As a theorist these two aspects outweigh any argument in favor of Fortran. The only serious competition to python for me is mathematica.
    - TheRealKing 8y ago
      The truth is, any language other than Fortran/C is slow for any serious high-performance-computing task (which is not the same as everyday back-of-envelop calculations and plotting).
  - atemerev 8y ago

by x3tm 8y ago

atemerev 8y ago

CERN is an exception; they are famously a C++ shop. I really really don’t like C++; nearly anything else is preferable to me. Fortran is simple and math-oriented; C++ is horribly complicated and system programming oriented.

Gene_Parmesan 8y ago
There is a subset of C++ that is really pleasant to work with, performant, and simple-ish. Unfortunately, the community around the standards/development processes just seem to want to keep adding more, more, and more to an already top-heavy language. Every idea in language design just must be added in. When you add in the problems from legacy C compatibility, you have a language that no one person can ever hope to grasp in its entirety. I mean, it's so complex now it pushed Scott Meyers into semi-retirement. I wish they would have just dumped C legacy stuff and started over some time in the 90s. Actually, the language D is precisely what I wish C++ had become. I just wish D was more widely adopted.
walshemj 8y ago
when I looked a few years ago they where recruiting for Fortran

killaken2000 8y ago

A youtuber that I follow recently finished his PhD and used FORTRAN extensively. He said that he started with python and it was incredibly slow so he rewrote everything in FORTRAN. It may be that his use case (something with cloud or other weather modeling function) was just particularly well suited

ekun 8y ago
Any compiled language will be drastically faster than an interpretive scripting language like Python (although numpy/scipy is generally C or Fortran libraries compiled to be called by Python). Having said that I used Fortran for my PhD to do radiation simulations because I was implementing a new methodology into existing code. In my opinion Fortran is easier and safer to use for scientists with little background in coding because it was built to do math/simulations really well AND it's readable almost like psuedocode (compared with C or C++). Also, modern Fortran is object-oriented which makes building reusable tools and large packages pretty easy. Having said all of this I think a lot of the physics/nuclear/aerospace/finance community is probably transitioning into more modern languages and starting to employ people with actual CS backgrounds to build with more updated coding practices.
gnulinux 8y ago
Did they write python correctly though? If you vectorize your algos well enough to exclusively use numpy scipy and never use python loops then python is really really fast (not because python is fast but because numpy/scipy is fast)
- x3tm 8y ago
  Exactly. That's why I say that the speed argument is a bit obsolete by now. We can have the best of the two worlds with python! Elegance/simplicity and speed. The focus on the speed of execution also downplays two other important aspects of python: speed of writing code and possibility to visualize results easily. As a theorist these two aspects outweigh any argument in favor of Fortran. The only serious competition to python for me is mathematica.
  - TheRealKing 8y ago
    The truth is, any language other than Fortran/C is slow for any serious high-performance-computing task (which is not the same as everyday back-of-envelop calculations and plotting).
- atemerev 8y ago