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This might be a bit irrelevant but, my professor who teaches computer programming (who previously worked as a nuclear physicist) loved mentioning Fortran whene

This might be a bit irrelevant but, my professor who teaches computer programming (who previously worked as a nuclear physicist) loved mentioning Fortran whenever possible. He truly enjoy the language and believes it is well suited for heavy computation. He said its used a lot for weather forecasting. He is quite old now so I don’t know how true it is today, but he made me more interested in Fortran and I might give it a shot instead of C sometime soon.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago
[flagged]
- therealcamino 3y ago
  "Most academic institutions have been sued many times due to the volume of nonsense they feed kids." I've never heard of that happening, let alone many times to most institutions.
  - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - bananapub 3y ago
      so your weird unfounded assertion is also explicitly unprovable? awesome, thanks for sharing.
      - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        In general lexis nexus holds the records of former students suing for BS employment promises. You would be fairly surprised who showed up besides trump u in the states. It was a lot more common than most like to admit. =)
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      > Part of the settlements is an NDA. If someone is sued, that creates a court record. Even if the terms of the settlement are not disclosed, that there was a settlement is lodged in the court record, and publicly accessible. Even if court records are sealed, the existence of the case is not, and initial complaints are rarely sealed. In short, if suing universities because of what they're teaching is routine, you should be able to point to court cases. If you can't find them, then it's not because it's secret--secret court cases don't exist--it's because they don't exist.
      - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        [flagged]
        jcranmer 3y ago
        Give me three case numbers of cases where former students successfully sued the institution (cases that were dismissed don't count--just because a case was filed does not mean it is meritorious). Those case numbers should make it easy for anyone to find the complete docket of the case on PACER (if it's federal court) or applicable state courts (well, to the degree to which states make their dockets easily accessible). You made the assertion; it's your job, not my job, to provide evidence for your assertion, and I've put you on notice as to the evidence that is satisfactory. If you can't provide the evidence, I have no reason to believe your assertion.
        Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        T
        jcranmer 3y ago
        > You would be fairly surprised who showed up besides trump u in the states. Okay then, who showed up? You imply you know who. It shouldn't take any effort to name anybody, if you already know them.
    - __mharrison__ 3y ago
      Can someone enlighten me as to what "T" means? First time I've seen it.
      - jcranmer 3y ago
        Not sure, but the individual previously had a different comment that was edited to be just "T".
        Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        F
      - sbierwagen 3y ago
        HN won't let you delete a comment if it has replies. The workaround, if you're still in the edit window, is to delete all the text instead. Doing this is considered rude.
        Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        [flagged]
        __mharrison__ 3y ago
        Thanks.
nonameiguess 3y ago
I haven't talked to him in a few years, but used to be good friends with a meteorology researcher at Purdue and Fortran was virtually all he knew, it's so heavily used. When I first started out in GEOINT processing, a lot of our code (NRO code) at the library level was still Fortran, but that was mostly older libraries. Anything written after 2005 or so was predominantly C++. I don't really keep up to date with the constellation status since I haven't worked there in a while now, but there were still a few orbital platforms older than that back around 2017 or so and the code for handling them was still largely Fortran. We never used Fortran directly, though, only bindings for C++, though I did have to learn a tiny bit of Fortran to hack on those once.
- green-salt 3y ago
  This was the case for an atmospheric research facility's HPC cluster which was pretty much running all fortran for the calculations at least back in 2010.
dkarl 3y ago
Professors will do weird things if they get a chance. I know of a junior college where the intro to programming course used Fortran77 in the late 2000s. A lot of kids signed up for it because they needed a STEM elective and didn't want to take math or science.
kergonath 3y ago
It is still very much used for weather forecasting (ECMWF has components in it), as well as materials physics, quantum chemistry, and things like finite elements and nuclear fuel performance codes. It is much, much better than C for all these applications. Nobody in the field seriously considers C; all the non-Fortran codes are in C++. Both the Fortran and C++ bits have Python wrappers anyway.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

[flagged]

therealcamino 3y ago
"Most academic institutions have been sued many times due to the volume of nonsense they feed kids." I've never heard of that happening, let alone many times to most institutions.
- Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bananapub 3y ago
    so your weird unfounded assertion is also explicitly unprovable? awesome, thanks for sharing.
    - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
      In general lexis nexus holds the records of former students suing for BS employment promises. You would be fairly surprised who showed up besides trump u in the states. It was a lot more common than most like to admit. =)
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > Part of the settlements is an NDA. If someone is sued, that creates a court record. Even if the terms of the settlement are not disclosed, that there was a settlement is lodged in the court record, and publicly accessible. Even if court records are sealed, the existence of the case is not, and initial complaints are rarely sealed. In short, if suing universities because of what they're teaching is routine, you should be able to point to court cases. If you can't find them, then it's not because it's secret--secret court cases don't exist--it's because they don't exist.
    - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - jcranmer 3y ago
        Give me three case numbers of cases where former students successfully sued the institution (cases that were dismissed don't count--just because a case was filed does not mean it is meritorious). Those case numbers should make it easy for anyone to find the complete docket of the case on PACER (if it's federal court) or applicable state courts (well, to the degree to which states make their dockets easily accessible). You made the assertion; it's your job, not my job, to provide evidence for your assertion, and I've put you on notice as to the evidence that is satisfactory. If you can't provide the evidence, I have no reason to believe your assertion.
        Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        T
        jcranmer 3y ago
        > You would be fairly surprised who showed up besides trump u in the states. Okay then, who showed up? You imply you know who. It shouldn't take any effort to name anybody, if you already know them.
  - __mharrison__ 3y ago
    Can someone enlighten me as to what "T" means? First time I've seen it.
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      Not sure, but the individual previously had a different comment that was edited to be just "T".
      - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        F
    - sbierwagen 3y ago
      HN won't let you delete a comment if it has replies. The workaround, if you're still in the edit window, is to delete all the text instead. Doing this is considered rude.
      - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - __mharrison__ 3y ago
        Thanks.

nonameiguess 3y ago

I haven't talked to him in a few years, but used to be good friends with a meteorology researcher at Purdue and Fortran was virtually all he knew, it's so heavily used. When I first started out in GEOINT processing, a lot of our code (NRO code) at the library level was still Fortran, but that was mostly older libraries. Anything written after 2005 or so was predominantly C++. I don't really keep up to date with the constellation status since I haven't worked there in a while now, but there were still a few orbital platforms older than that back around 2017 or so and the code for handling them was still largely Fortran. We never used Fortran directly, though, only bindings for C++, though I did have to learn a tiny bit of Fortran to hack on those once.

green-salt 3y ago
This was the case for an atmospheric research facility's HPC cluster which was pretty much running all fortran for the calculations at least back in 2010.

dkarl 3y ago

Professors will do weird things if they get a chance. I know of a junior college where the intro to programming course used Fortran77 in the late 2000s. A lot of kids signed up for it because they needed a STEM elective and didn't want to take math or science.

kergonath 3y ago

It is still very much used for weather forecasting (ECMWF has components in it), as well as materials physics, quantum chemistry, and things like finite elements and nuclear fuel performance codes. It is much, much better than C for all these applications. Nobody in the field seriously considers C; all the non-Fortran codes are in C++. Both the Fortran and C++ bits have Python wrappers anyway.