4 ms·

> why fortran? why not? the language is straightforward and loops are fast. It is portable and your code will work unchanged for the next 50 years. It may b

> why fortran? why not? the language is straightforward and loops are fast. It is portable and your code will work unchanged for the next 50 years. It may be a bit verbose, but that's not a big deal with today's tooling.

FormerLabFred 7mo ago
Fortran will survive the cockroaches even, when the world 404s
pklausler 7mo ago
Your code will work unchanged until you try to change compilers or your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language.
- kergonath 7mo ago
  > your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language Like all the 3 of them they added in the last 30 years, and that compiler vendors are not enforcing anyway because they don’t want to annoy their users? Windows’ backward compatibility is a joke compared to Fortran.
  - pklausler 6mo ago
    We're definitely enforcing some of them. But the latest one from F'2023 isn't going to be.
deadbabe 7mo ago
Great, can we see some benchmarks?
- FormerLabFred 7mo ago
  Cobolsky holds the record for most surprised looks per line of code :) Fortransky benchmarks pending the feed scorer will have real numbers worth reporting Whenever time allows in future: Fortran vs Go vs Python
foxglacier 7mo ago
Yea na, Fortran is pretty compiler dependent and there are a lot of compilers. Already old Fortran code used all sorts of now-dead proprietary compilers and can take a huge effort to get it to compile on modern compilers or even modern computers. Modern code might use Gfortran which sometimes makes breaking changes so that's not an option. Perhaps if everyone uses the latest shiny new Flang or whatever, then it'll finally last 50 years? Not likely, given the history.
- pklausler 7mo ago
  For a standardized language, Fortran isn’t very portable across compilers. GNU Fortran has done a great job supporting legacy features, and I hope that our work in flang-new has made it easy to port to, as well. I basically ignored the zealots who wanted flang-new to be a strict compiler by default. The hobbyist project LFortran is quite the opposite, and will yell at you by default for perfectly conforming variations in keyword spelling. For those who like that sort of thing, that’s exactly the sort of thing that they like.

FormerLabFred 7mo ago

Fortran will survive the cockroaches even, when the world 404s

pklausler 7mo ago

Your code will work unchanged until you try to change compilers or your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language.

kergonath 7mo ago
> your compiler adopts a J3 breaking change to the language Like all the 3 of them they added in the last 30 years, and that compiler vendors are not enforcing anyway because they don’t want to annoy their users? Windows’ backward compatibility is a joke compared to Fortran.
- pklausler 6mo ago
  We're definitely enforcing some of them. But the latest one from F'2023 isn't going to be.

deadbabe 7mo ago

Great, can we see some benchmarks?

FormerLabFred 7mo ago
Cobolsky holds the record for most surprised looks per line of code :) Fortransky benchmarks pending the feed scorer will have real numbers worth reporting Whenever time allows in future: Fortran vs Go vs Python

foxglacier 7mo ago

Yea na, Fortran is pretty compiler dependent and there are a lot of compilers. Already old Fortran code used all sorts of now-dead proprietary compilers and can take a huge effort to get it to compile on modern compilers or even modern computers. Modern code might use Gfortran which sometimes makes breaking changes so that's not an option. Perhaps if everyone uses the latest shiny new Flang or whatever, then it'll finally last 50 years? Not likely, given the history.

pklausler 7mo ago
For a standardized language, Fortran isn’t very portable across compilers. GNU Fortran has done a great job supporting legacy features, and I hope that our work in flang-new has made it easy to port to, as well. I basically ignored the zealots who wanted flang-new to be a strict compiler by default. The hobbyist project LFortran is quite the opposite, and will yell at you by default for perfectly conforming variations in keyword spelling. For those who like that sort of thing, that’s exactly the sort of thing that they like.