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Fortran has language-level support for things important for numerical scientific computing (complex numbers, multidimensional arrays, etc.), and it has had them
by ufov2 7y ago
Fortran has language-level support for things important for numerical scientific computing (complex numbers, multidimensional arrays, etc.), and it has had them since the beginning in the 1950-60s.
The convenience is not really matched by C or C++, where similar features have been added much later by language extensions or 3rd party libraries, resulting to more complicated usage, fragmentation, and interoperability problems. Newer languages also have similar issues, so for the user base that uses Fortran, there's a lack of viable competitors.
- PaulHoule 7y agoAlso numerical codes can be trickier to write than you think. Rounding errors and other treacheries of the floating point approximation to the 'real' numbers can eat you alive. If you want to do common numeric operations they might be a FORTRAN code that is battle tested and performance tuned and it usually not hard to call from C, Java, Python or some other language.
- stephencanon 7y agoFortran’s numerics model is actually somewhat weaker than C’s; if precise rounding behavior is your main concern C (while still not ideal) is a better option.
- gnufx 7y agoFor those of us not expert on the standards, could you explain in what way Fortran is weaker, and its rounding control deficient?