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I honestly am not too sure why there is so much derision regarding Fortran (ageism?). A lot of people don't seem to realize the importance this language still h

• rossdavidh 7y ago
  Fortran is absolutely still an important language...for scientific computing. Not my first choice for a web framework. Although, I don't guess it's any worse than wanting to use your client-side scripting language for your server, or you database query language.
• greglindahl 7y ago
  Seems that many CS folks don't think much of Fortran because their programming languages survey course professor made fun of Fortran 77. Fortran has moved on, even if you professor hasn't.
  • ken 7y ago
    The opposite, in fact. My professor talked about the amazing things he did with Fortran. Then I had to learn it in order to find the bugs. I'd never use it by choice. I know of 4 major languages created in the 1950's: Lisp, Algol, Fortran, and Cobol. Lisp and Algol were brilliantly designed, years ahead of their time, and have inspired nearly every programming language since then. Fortran and Cobol not only look like evolutionary dead ends in hindsight, but they weren't pleasant to use even when they were popular. There's a reason we still see Lisp posts on HN almost every day, and very rarely Fortran posts.
    • greglindahl 7y ago
      You seem to be exhibiting the problem I describe -- Fortran 2018 is not the same as Fortran 77.