4 ms·

My impression, having programmed quite a bit of Fortran, is that it’s not official at all. Also the language is maintained in a completely different way (standa

My impression, having programmed quite a bit of Fortran, is that it’s not official at all. Also the language is maintained in a completely different way (standards Committee) so it feels off.

kergonath 3y ago
It is not official, but several people involved are in one of the standard committees. There is quite a lot of discussion on the Discourse group ( https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/ https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/ ), which also involves both committee members and ordinary developers.
- pklausler 3y ago
  And lots of crazy trolls. Not recommended.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    Yes, there is a bit of that, unfortunately. Which is a shame because there are very nice people too.
    - certik 3y ago
      Yes, there are many nice people there and we are doing what we can to moderate the Discourse so that we can all have a nice place to discuss.
  - certik 3y ago
    Peter, I am sorry that some users drove you away, possibly myself included. I am personally doing what I can to keep the Fortran open source (and commercial) community together, I have done this before (e.g., with SymPy), and the Fortran community can be very tough in some of the responses. I know most of the people in person, and they are all very nice people. We regularly address unconstructive behavior. If you or anyone has some feedback how we can run things better, please let me know (you can email me at ondrej@certik.us).
certik 3y ago
One of the co-founders of the fortran-lang effort. Actually, I would say it is as official as it can be. If you google "fortran", it comes up as first. We provide the home for all of fortran, all of the compilers (commercial and open source), documentation, forum, etc. Wikipedia lists fortran-lang.org as the webpage. Both of the initial co-founders of fortran-lang are part of the standards committee (but the fortran-lang effort is now much bigger than them), and many of the standards committee members are participating in the discourse. I don't think it is the job of the ISO Fortran Standards Committee to maintain a website and a discussion forum, but rather the job is to standardize the language. So it is a complementary effort. To maintain the language has to be an effort of the whole Fortran community, which includes users, compiler writers, the standards committee, and anybody who is able to help.
- pletnes 3y ago
  That’s good news! Fortran has always suffered from too few online resources of good quality. No wonder people prefer other languages - I bought some used Metcalf books, but an online, searchable reference is much better. I didn’t intend to say that «not official» means «bad». I learned a lot of stuff from «non-official web pages» over the years.
  - certik 3y ago
    > I didn’t intend to say that «not official» means «bad». Yes, I know, I understood that. Thank you. I was reacting to the term official, since it is an interesting question what official means for Fortran, since in a way it was "abandoned", there was the ISO committee as the only official body, but nobody wanted to provide an official place for it on the internet (the most official place was actually the Fortran Wikipedia article). So we volunteered that. In a way, I think it could already be treated as official, or if not, hopefully in a few years most people will treat it as the de-facto official. Kind of like the git webpage has migrated from https://repo.or.cz/ https://repo.or.cz/ to https://git-scm.com/ https://git-scm.com/, but both in a way are unofficial, but the second one is a nice modern webpage and most people liked it and accepted it as official. I don't know the people behind either webpage.

My impression, having programmed quite a bit of Fortran, is that it’s not official at all. Also the language is maintained in a completely different way (standards Committee) so it feels off.

kergonath 3y ago

It is not official, but several people involved are in one of the standard committees. There is quite a lot of discussion on the Discourse group ( https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/ https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/ ), which also involves both committee members and ordinary developers.

pklausler 3y ago
And lots of crazy trolls. Not recommended.
- kergonath 3y ago
  Yes, there is a bit of that, unfortunately. Which is a shame because there are very nice people too.
  - certik 3y ago
    Yes, there are many nice people there and we are doing what we can to moderate the Discourse so that we can all have a nice place to discuss.
- certik 3y ago
  Peter, I am sorry that some users drove you away, possibly myself included. I am personally doing what I can to keep the Fortran open source (and commercial) community together, I have done this before (e.g., with SymPy), and the Fortran community can be very tough in some of the responses. I know most of the people in person, and they are all very nice people. We regularly address unconstructive behavior. If you or anyone has some feedback how we can run things better, please let me know (you can email me at ondrej@certik.us).

certik 3y ago

One of the co-founders of the fortran-lang effort. Actually, I would say it is as official as it can be. If you google "fortran", it comes up as first. We provide the home for all of fortran, all of the compilers (commercial and open source), documentation, forum, etc. Wikipedia lists fortran-lang.org as the webpage. Both of the initial co-founders of fortran-lang are part of the standards committee (but the fortran-lang effort is now much bigger than them), and many of the standards committee members are participating in the discourse. I don't think it is the job of the ISO Fortran Standards Committee to maintain a website and a discussion forum, but rather the job is to standardize the language. So it is a complementary effort. To maintain the language has to be an effort of the whole Fortran community, which includes users, compiler writers, the standards committee, and anybody who is able to help.

pletnes 3y ago
That’s good news! Fortran has always suffered from too few online resources of good quality. No wonder people prefer other languages - I bought some used Metcalf books, but an online, searchable reference is much better. I didn’t intend to say that «not official» means «bad». I learned a lot of stuff from «non-official web pages» over the years.
- certik 3y ago
  > I didn’t intend to say that «not official» means «bad». Yes, I know, I understood that. Thank you. I was reacting to the term official, since it is an interesting question what official means for Fortran, since in a way it was "abandoned", there was the ISO committee as the only official body, but nobody wanted to provide an official place for it on the internet (the most official place was actually the Fortran Wikipedia article). So we volunteered that. In a way, I think it could already be treated as official, or if not, hopefully in a few years most people will treat it as the de-facto official. Kind of like the git webpage has migrated from https://repo.or.cz/ https://repo.or.cz/ to https://git-scm.com/ https://git-scm.com/, but both in a way are unofficial, but the second one is a nice modern webpage and most people liked it and accepted it as official. I don't know the people behind either webpage.