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Is FORTRAN Still Kicking?
Algorithm wrangler queries: "I'm beginning to wonder if I should invest the time in learning FORTRAN. Although it is, arcane it seems to be the best tool when it comes to demanding optimization tasks and heavy computations. C/C++ does not cut it for me - it is simply too easy to make mistakes and I find myself using half of my time hunting bugs unrelated to the problem at hand. Additionally, although tools like Matlab exist they don't provide the power that justify the huge price tag they carry. I find any script based language (Matlab, Numeric Python, Scilab) to be inadequate as soon as it is necessary to use loops to describe a problem and using such tools for recursive systems can be a real pain. As another data-point, the Netlib repository seems to be very FORTRAN oriented, and it is a true gold mine when it comes to free routines for solving almost any computing task. What bothers me though is that FORTRAN code is really ugly and the language lacks almost any modern day language feature (I know about Fortran 90 but it is not much nicer than F77, and no one seems to use it). Can it really be true that the best tool we have for heavy duty computing is a 25 year old language, or have you found anything better - free or non-free?"
Fortran 90 has plenty of structured programming features to make maintainable code. Equally, if not more important, is that Fortran code can be much better optimized than C/C++ code for numerics. IBM did a good job on Fortran, and it's still a major player today.
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Speaking of meteorological programming, ALL the major atmospheric models are written in FORTRAN. The ETA, AVN, NGM, MM5, WRF, and scores of lesser-known models...all of them written in FORTRAN (most of them FORTRAN-90 now, but some of the older ones are FORTRAN-77). The MM5 & WRF may be found here and here. The source code to several others is readily available as well if you're so inclined, for instance the ETA and the ARPS. Anyone wanting to run them may do so fairly easily on a PC running Linux (any new PC will be able to run a fairly hi-res model real-time); I do so myself.
Different languages have different strengths and weaknesses. I use Fortran, C, Ada95, and Ocaml interchangeably for different tasks. Often times linking the object files into a single executable.
Fortran, designed for mathematics and engineering, obviously excels at that job. You might want to consider writing the "intensive" parts of your application in Fortran and then linking it with modules written in another language such as C or Ada.
I've found that C is perfect for handling the I/O routines for such apps, but my Ada libs are ideal for doing memory managment and when the code outgrows the practical limitations imposed by Fortran.(Note: Interfaces.C and Interfaces.Fortran).
Likewise Ocaml tends to fit around anything with a minimum of hassle.
Of course, this is just a subjective evaluation derived from my own experiences. However I would encourage you to experiment to find the combination that works best for you. As we all should know "Theres more than one way to do it."
I'm sorry if this post seems somewhat vague, but it would be rather hypocritical of me to outright prescribe a certain language or tool when I personally have a tendency to float around and use whatever tool is most convenient.
NiCad
Honestly, your objection to C++ is unclear to me...you say you spend more time fixing bugs than approaching the task at hand? Is this because you don't know the language that well? Perhaps because you're not taking advantage of the many excellent libraries available to you? Keep in mind that C++ library design requires a great deal of skill, but using a well-designed library is actually easier than coding in other languages.
C++ is my own personal choice for anything by the most demanding of high-performance computing applications. Is there an overhead to the language? Debatably, yes. Does it matter, in 99.9% of applications? No. And with only a little bit of forethought, even the "inherent" performance hits can be avoided in the places where it matters. It's just that you have to rely on a profiler to tell you where those places are...
There is a significant community of researchers and developers working on scientific and high-performance computing in C++. Check out some of these:
These are just a few good starting points. Do a google search for 'high performance c++' to find many more. Just, please, for the love of Deity, don't code in FORTRAN. ick....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
It's obvious that the story's poster didn't really look into FORTRAN much past the aging F77.
I currently use F77 to do research in magneto-hydrodynamics simulations of neutron stars on Cornell's Velocity Cluster (which has been featured on slashdot before). Fortran, due to its lack of things like pointers, etc, is rediculously efficient, and almost completely cross platform (because surprise surprise- it's very difficult to attempt to do anything remotely platform specific). The language is much simpler than something like C with pointers, etc, that must be messed with. Sure it's ugly as hell, but once again the newer versions of Fortran take care of most of these issues.
I would suggest that anyone interested in high performance computing should check out High Performance Fortran. It's a set of extensions to the F90 language to allow the seemless integration of large-scale parallelization in your code. It also has several other performance advancements.
I highly disagree with the poster of the story, Fortran 90 is much more modern than F77, including things like objects, safe pointers, better recursion, better array sharing, generic routines (a type of function overloading). The language syntax is also much more lenient than F77 (which was designed to work with punchcards). It also has some really great array operations (things like slices, etc) that are rediculously fast. While I absolutely hate F77, if I was going to write a computationally intensive simulation, I'd probably do so in F90 or HPF.
A lot of people still use Fortran, especially computational physicists and meteorologists... Many of these people don't have time to learn new programming languages, and Fortran works very well for what they need, better in most situations than almost any other language. It's something to consider.
Cheers
Justin
"FORTRAN: "The infantile disorder", by now nearly twenty years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use." (1982).
"In the good old days physicists repeated each others experiments, just to be sure. Today, they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each others programs. And bugs."
--Edsger Dijkstra
(Interestingly enough, Dijkstra died today.)
This shows absolutely no understanding of the language. Sit down if you're not in the field.
I used to teach "Practical Parallel Programminh" at the Univesity of Leeds and this is just crap. Fortran is typically used with OpenMP / MPI to do parallel programming. Older freaks might use PVM. They're all available for C/C++.
And it's not that I'm no longer in the field, I currently work on Grid/Globus applications.
Fortran is no more safe or fast to program in I'd argue it's a less safe myself. The performance difference between an optimal fortran program and an optimal C program I'd argue is nearly nil. Show me different, and explain why. Go on, try it.
jh
jh