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Is there any value in learning Fortran today, regardless if you work in a domain where it’s a thing or now? From seeing a lot of job postings in the sort of do
by the_only_law 6y ago
Is there any value in learning Fortran today, regardless if you work in a domain where it’s a thing or now?
From seeing a lot of job postings in the sort of domains one would expect it to be used(scientific stuff and similar “academic” and research fields) it seems like Python and maybe Julia has taken over for most stuff and Fortran requirements are written as if it’s a “nice to have” for any legacy maintenance.
- abzug 6y agoA bunch of scientific libraries in Python and Julia are wrappers for really fast stuff made in Fortran, C/C++ so...
- oscardssmith 6y agoBLAS/LApack are pretty much the only Fortran libraries that Julia uses afaik. There is also in development work on a Julia only blas replacement (Octavian.jl) which is competitive with mkl for the basic gemm already (more work needed for some of the more obscure functions). Lots of the push behind Julia is for it's ability to let fairly simple code compete with hands optimized Fortran.
- dagw 6y agoIf you work in a 'number crunching' domain it's worth learning enough Fortran to be able to read it. You'll at some point probably have to look at some Fortran code and try understand how it works (or doesn't work). However the chances that you'll be called upon to write new Fortran is tiny.