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FORTRAN quotes: “You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers." — Steven Feiner. "FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by

FORTRAN quotes: “You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers." — Steven Feiner. "FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use." — Dijkstra, circa 1970. "FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular." — Ken Thompson, "Reflections on Trusting Trust" "In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included." — Dijkstra (1930—2002). "Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice." — Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual "FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed — it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer." — Alan J. Perlis. "You can create bad Fortran in any language." —? “I don't know what the programming language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN.” — Dijkstra “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” - Picasso From: http://www.csl.mtu.edu/cs5311.ck/www/quote.html http://www.csl.mtu.edu/cs5311.ck/www/quote.html and https://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/QuotesProgramming.html https://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/QuotesProgramming.html

m_mueller 6y ago
This is kinda like judging C by how bad Algol was. Fortran 90 and its successors should be looked as a separate language from the old fixed format Fortrans, and they are the currently IMO the best we got for supercomputing purposes (i.e. I'd prefer it over C/C++, in that specific domain). That being said, I hope Julia pushes through as a replacement. Note that I'd never advocate for Fortran in any capacity outside of that domain, e.g. for system programming.
- TheRealKing 6y ago
  The problem with Julia is that there is so much hype around it, likely because of the for-profit company behind Julia. I see a non-negligible number of false claims and false promises on Julia's performance on the web every now and then. and when people test it for real production code they get disappointed with it.
  - cbkeller 6y ago
    I don't think that's particularly what's going on. I think it's more just that Julia has a relatively small but incredibly zealous group of users. If Julia solves your personal version of the two language problem, and especially if dispatch-oriented programming happens to be a good fit for the problems you solve and the way you like to program, you're probably going to think it's the best thing since sliced bread. If not, on the other hand, you may not think it's anything particularly special.
  - amkkma 5y ago
    "I see a non-negligible number of false claims and false promises on Julia's performance on the web every now and then. and when people test it for real production code they get disappointed with it." Can you cite one or more specific examples of this? I'd like to see what you mean. Edit: You seem to be a Fortran fan

m_mueller 6y ago

This is kinda like judging C by how bad Algol was. Fortran 90 and its successors should be looked as a separate language from the old fixed format Fortrans, and they are the currently IMO the best we got for supercomputing purposes (i.e. I'd prefer it over C/C++, in that specific domain). That being said, I hope Julia pushes through as a replacement. Note that I'd never advocate for Fortran in any capacity outside of that domain, e.g. for system programming.

TheRealKing 6y ago
The problem with Julia is that there is so much hype around it, likely because of the for-profit company behind Julia. I see a non-negligible number of false claims and false promises on Julia's performance on the web every now and then. and when people test it for real production code they get disappointed with it.
- cbkeller 6y ago
  I don't think that's particularly what's going on. I think it's more just that Julia has a relatively small but incredibly zealous group of users. If Julia solves your personal version of the two language problem, and especially if dispatch-oriented programming happens to be a good fit for the problems you solve and the way you like to program, you're probably going to think it's the best thing since sliced bread. If not, on the other hand, you may not think it's anything particularly special.
- amkkma 5y ago
  "I see a non-negligible number of false claims and false promises on Julia's performance on the web every now and then. and when people test it for real production code they get disappointed with it." Can you cite one or more specific examples of this? I'd like to see what you mean. Edit: You seem to be a Fortran fan