#Fortran has joined the modern world: it has its own conference, #FortranCon.

#Fortran has joined the modern world: it has its own conference, #FortranCon.
Back to the Fortran Future 2
This satellite event takes place 8th September 2025 adjacent to RSECon25 (9-11th September 2025) at the University of Warwick.
Its free to attend, so if you have an interest in Scientific Fortran please consider joining us.
@muzej I used this as my first programming manual: https://plus.cobiss.net/cobiss/si/sl/bib/16922 #fortran
Hold on, f2py CAN make Fortran functions comprehensible to Python‽ I DON'T have to use subroutines‽ Fortran syntax is just incredibly FUSSY‽
FORTRAN IV Manual (1982), adapted by Rafko Adrinek and published by Iskra Delta!
#FORTRAN was the first widely adopted “standard” programming language, especially popular during the 1960s and 70s — the punch card era.
Back then, it powered massive mainframes, and its legacy still lives on today in modern supercomputer programming!
I have figured out the correct syntax to make floating-point calculations in Fortran more precise.
Unlocking Fortran: A C/C++ Programmer's Guide to Modern Fortran Standards
Fortran, one of the oldest programming languages, continues to evolve, offering robust features that can benefit modern developers. This guide provides C and C++ programmers with essential insights in...
https://news.lavx.hu/article/unlocking-fortran-a-c-c-programmer-s-guide-to-modern-fortran-standards
I love this piece about #lowlevel #programming (which includes a shameless plug for #fortran, something i had not realized before)
So now one of the reasons for GNU #FORTRAN is gone:
Keep hearing whispering voices "GNU COBOL, GNU COBOL"
@mattgemmell Surely you mean 64x16.
Yes, that is Fortran. On the Radio Shack TRS-80. My first programming job.
Pondering if I dare to put #Fortran into my CV.
I can do some Fortran, partly because it keeps coming up in all sorts of #retrocomputing contexts, but, even with Ratfor enhancements, I don't consider it a well-designed or pleasant language, and I'm not sure I can see myself working at a place that deals in new Fortran code now that nice, human-friendly languages such as NumPy and APL have been invented. Besides, 21st century Fortran is a really weird language that doesn't even know what it wants to be when it grows up.
The original #LISP had 7 primitives: \(\texttt{cons}\), \(\texttt{car,}\) \(\texttt{cdr}\), \(\texttt{atom}\), \(\texttt{quote}\), \(\texttt{eq}\), and \(\texttt{cond}\). And the original #Smalltalk syntax could fit on a 5×7 card. That meant a novice could learn the syntax in a matter of minutes, and direct all his efforts to learning how properly to wield the power of that Turing-complete language. This was why, in the 1970s and the 1980s, many college freshmen were taught FP in Scheme (a more modern LISP) and many middle school children were taught OO in Smalltalk. These were surely the best "first" #programming languages.
#FORTRAN and #BASIC were simple, too. FORTRAN, the first high-level language, has been in continuous use since the late 1950s by engineers, who are not keyboard warriors. BASIC was invented in the early 1960s for teaching programming to non-STEM students at Dartmouth. It sired a whole generation of self-taught children in the 1980s.
Compare those to C++, Erlang, Python, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Scala, Rust, Kotlin, and pretty much every language in popular use today. Most consider Python and JavaScript to be the simplest of modern languages. Yet, they are massive, complex languages. No 10-year-old could teach himself those, nor should he.
The original versions of those classic languages cannot be used to solve modern problems. But they should still be taught to youngsters as their first language. Throwing in the kids' faces a modern enterprise language confuses them and discourages them. Consequently, many novices never attain that state of flow, when the joy of programming gushes forth.
#Simplicity is a virtue. Self-motivated learning is virtuous.
Writing a commandline tool in #Fortran:
https://www.draketo.de/english/free-software/fortran
In case you want to broaden your #programming skills. Fortran seems to be making a comeback (currently 11 in the Tiobe index: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/fortran/ ).
This is from 2017, written at the end of my Physics PostDoc where I used quite a bit of Fortran and learned to appreciate it much more than I expected.
FORTRAN package manager in Guix?
https://github.com/fortran-lang/fpm
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79357849/how-to-package-the-fortran-package-manager-for-gnu-guix
It's backed by https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/fortran
“Personally, I think the world needs only so many implementations of #FORTRAN 77.” — #RobertNystrom
is #Fortran memory safe?
I don't think I have ever heard of a CVE in Fortran code.
Interested in #MPI and #OpenMP parallel programming to speed up your scientific applications written in #C, #Cpp, #Fortran or #Python (with #numpy)?
Attend our course in #Mainz at the Johannes Gutenberg University (#JGU) for a 4-day course from 1. April to 4. April 2025! We still have plenty of space available!
See our announcement page for further details and to register: https://indico.zdv.uni-mainz.de/event/34/
Note, it is an on-site course.
We wouldn't have this problem with DOGE's interns if they had to learn COBOL, FORTRAN, and PASCAL - like I had to.
BTW: My major programming language? Perl
Second only to Objective-C... NOT SWIFT. Obj-C!