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Be careful what you're asking for...

I've been hoping for COBOL.NET.

http://www.netcobol.com/

...and FORTRAN.NET

http://www.lahey.com/lf71/lf71.htm

and RPG.NET

http://74.196.41.169:8084/

Being an old fuddy-duddy, my first thought that Microsoft was doing a dot NET version of Fortran, but...

Obvious retort is why?

I've no idea why you'd want one, but it exists, nonetheless - made by Fujitsu of all things.

Fortran and cobol are recently making a comeback as well. It seems to be cool, again. Does this mean we will see them as a .net application? Suppose so.. I can see it now Visual Cobol, and Visual Ada and Visual Fortran....

Yeah, I submitted the bug into the Apple Bug Reporter just for the heck of it (and because it's fun!), but from what I can tell I guess it's just a matter of floating point arithmetic having certain inherent limitations.

Lahey has a Fortan for .NET Compiler

I think this is what you meant by F#, right? Fortrant.NET wasn't written by microsoft, they just used the specs to write to IL (or so I think).

Lahey has a Fortan for .NET Compiler

I think this is what you meant by F#, right? Fortrant.NET wasn't written by microsoft, they just used the specs to write to IL (or so I think).

f95 do? Don't like that version? Try this instead.

Who would have though that a mainframe manufacturer would keep prompting dead langauges? <g>

Whilst Algol isn't there, Oberon is, as is Ada, a shareware version of Forth, Haskell, Eifell, Pascal, Perl, Python (twice) and SmallTalk

They so know that if they were to open up the CLR of their .net Technology, and like, allow people to write their own CLR languages, their stock would plummet.

Um, people can write their own CLR languages. Quite a few have. Hell, they even let Borland play.

Perl

Python

FORTRA

More FORTRAN

SmallTalk alike (SmallScript)

Mondrian

Pascal

Scheme

Mercury

Eiffel

Oberon

Cobol

Ya know what's annoying? Having to type in a bunch of random crap at the end of a message because slashdot does now seem to like having a low number of characters per line.

FYI, Lahey and Fujitsu have released a .NET version of Fortran. Also I thought Digital was releasing their Fortran on .NET, but not sure... (this is different from F#)

(never heard of them before, interesting). The basic version of their compiler (probably suitable for most student use?) is 249. There is an upsell version (looks like mainly a bunch of add-on or upgraded libs/tools like a gui constructor) for 695. Out of curiosity, what were the licensing restrictions you found objectionable? A cursury inspection of the site didn't reveal the licensing terms on the current product lineup (other than to mention that educational purchases can't legally be used to make commercial binaries, no big suprise there). thanks for the informative post, btw. :)

Fujitsu Fortran for .dot is being provided by Lahey. Here is a url.

FortranXP.. part of the Fortran.NET initiative.

Fortran for .NET is real.

That was just the first result from this Google search.

a) lack of dynamic memory allocation --- plain shit, nothing you can do about
You obviously don't know a thing about f90. Dynamic memory allocation is the first thing everyone converting an f77 code uses. Yes f77 is dated. Go pick up the f90 book by Cooper-Redwine and read the first chapter. Really, f90 is fairly clean.

b) everything is passed by reference - no recursion whatsoever
Inconvenient, but it makes for much easier optimization. For recursion, there are tricks in f90 now that allow you to overcome most of the obstacles.

The compilers are unbeliveably crash and bad. And I've tried both Sun and SGI f95 compilers... Sucessfully segfaulted them both within a few days of using them... Funnily enough NAG f95 compiler for linux seems to be quite stable.
I agree that Sun's f90 compilers are crap (although there f77 compilers are excellent), but SGI's is quite good. I use every advanced feature of F90 possible (derived types, pointers, allocatable arrays, operator overloading, etc.), and SGI's works quite well.

c) Surprisingly hard to interoperate with f77 or C, becaused modules get funnly pre/suffixes all over the place...
I've never had problems with f77 but I agree with about C. A bigger problem with f90 is that the array structure is compiler dependent. This was done to allow the compiler writers more flexibility in optimizing their code, especially for parallelization issues, but given the way high performance computing is moving (in the U.S. anyway), it is a pain.

If you want to use f90 on Linux, I highly recommend the Lahey-Fujitsu compiler. This produces nice fast code with good error checking. They seem to focus more on Windows than Linux which I dislike, but it is still a solid product.
Also quite good is Portrand Group

Here is some recommended links from them that all of the "Fortran sucks" crowd should read: prentice

In the U.S., the HPC community is clearly moving towards using C/C++ especially for the libraries (such as POOMA, Blitz,... that the parent poster mentioned). I've seen codes that have been POOMAized and they've run much slower than the original f90 versions. The POOMA guys talk about the fact that they will get their libraries further optimized, but it still remains to be seen. I saw a talk by the BLITZ people on how they are TRYING to get C++ as fast as C, which makes me think they should just use f90. My big complaint with these library writers is that they typically work with relatively simple problems -e.g., Poisson's equation- and then think that it will work for everything. I have yet to see a fluid code that uses these libraries and really fly.

As scientific problems become harder, the associated numerical algorithms become harder, and the codes more sophisticated and flexible. So agree that f77 is inadequate for any modern, real code, but that is hardly news. While the U.S. HPC community seems to be focussing on trying to get C/C++ up to snuff, it seems that Europe and Japan are pushing f90 or high performance fortran. I personally think we (the U.S.) are heading down the wrong path.

The basic reason why I use F90 is:
I'm a physicist, not a computer scientist. Yes, I agree that you can have fast code with C, but it is much harder.

a) lack of dynamic memory allocation --- plain shit, nothing you can do about
You obviously don't know a thing about f90. Dynamic memory allocation is the first thing everyone converting an f77 code uses. Yes f77 is dated. Go pick up the f90 book by Cooper-Redwine and read the first chapter. Really, f90 is fairly clean.

b) everything is passed by reference - no recursion whatsoever
Inconvenient, but it makes for much easier optimization. For recursion, there are tricks in f90 now that allow you to overcome most of the obstacles.

The compilers are unbeliveably crash and bad. And I've tried both Sun and SGI f95 compilers... Sucessfully segfaulted them both within a few days of using them... Funnily enough NAG f95 compiler for linux seems to be quite stable.
I agree that Sun's f90 compilers are crap (although there f77 compilers are excellent), but SGI's is quite good. I use every advanced feature of F90 possible (derived types, pointers, allocatable arrays, operator overloading, etc.), and SGI's works quite well.

c) Surprisingly hard to interoperate with f77 or C, becaused modules get funnly pre/suffixes all over the place...
I've never had problems with f77 but I agree with about C. A bigger problem with f90 is that the array structure is compiler dependent. This was done to allow the compiler writers more flexibility in optimizing their code, especially for parallelization issues, but given the way high performance computing is moving (in the U.S. anyway), it is a pain.

If you want to use f90 on Linux, I highly recommend the Lahey-Fujitsu compiler. This produces nice fast code with good error checking. They seem to focus more on Windows than Linux which I dislike, but it is still a solid product.
Also quite good is Portrand Group

Here is some recommended links from them that all of the "Fortran sucks" crowd should read: prentice

In the U.S., the HPC community is clearly moving towards using C/C++ especially for the libraries (such as POOMA, Blitz,... that the parent poster mentioned). I've seen codes that have been POOMAized and they've run much slower than the original f90 versions. The POOMA guys talk about the fact that they will get their libraries further optimized, but it still remains to be seen. I saw a talk by the BLITZ people on how they are TRYING to get C++ as fast as C, which makes me think they should just use f90. My big complaint with these library writers is that they typically work with relatively simple problems -e.g., Poisson's equation- and then think that it will work for everything. I have yet to see a fluid code that uses these libraries and really fly.

As scientific problems become harder, the associated numerical algorithms become harder, and the codes more sophisticated and flexible. So agree that f77 is inadequate for any modern, real code, but that is hardly news. While the U.S. HPC community seems to be focussing on trying to get C/C++ up to snuff, it seems that Europe and Japan are pushing f90 or high performance fortran. I personally think we (the U.S.) are heading down the wrong path.

The basic reason why I use F90 is:
I'm a physicist, not a computer scientist. Yes, I agree that you can have fast code with C, but it is much harder.

Is FORTRAN still alive? Check this out and learn the meaning of Fear:

• FORTRAN.NET

(Yes, you read that right. FORTRAN.NET. Flee! The Seventh Seal has been opened!)

Seen FORTRAN under XP yet?

Yes

There's also COBOL, Perl and Python

According to Lahey.com, it will be available:

"Fortran.NET is being integrated with Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This will enable Fortran programmers to work seamlessly with other .NET languages and tools."

Lahey.com