Fortran doesn't have pointer arithmetic, and pointers that decay like C. The compiler can be much more aggressive about optimization. Passing around variable l

Fortran doesn't have pointer arithmetic, and pointers that decay like C. The compiler can be much more aggressive about optimization. Passing around variable length arrays and arrays with a variable number of dimensions is much easier than C. You don't need to worry about making your own interface around blocks of memory or macros to do this sort of routine thing. Bounds checking is standard in every Fortran compiler. Fortran does what its name implies: FORMula TRANslation of math code without a lot of noise. Yes, 50 year old Fortran code can be hard to read. But, there are tools that can statically 'modernize' it if you really need to do maintenance on it.