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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 has several things going for it...
1) it's been the standard scientific computing language for so long, that every platform has a compiler, and that compiler is likely to be very mature (i.e. stable, and produces fast code).
2) since it's been a standard for so long, everyone has routines written in it which have been debugged and work, no sense rewriting them and introducing errors.
3) the language itself lacks complicated constructs, so it is very simple to optimize. This, with (1) makes fortran still outperform c, thanks to the compilers.
That said, I HATE fortran with a passion, mostly because it's ugly. 6 character variable names are impossible to deal with. Couple this with capitalization and indentation rules left over from the punch card era and you have code which is literally painful to read.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
...of the simple loop structures. In C, you can have a for( ; ; ) statement that does basically all sorts of weird crap in here ( ; ; ), and you can also do things like pointer aliasing (impossible in Fortran since there are no pointers at all).
Fortran loops, on the other hand, are very very simple - all you can do is increment the loop variable, and repeat. That allows for very heavy loop optimization by the compiler - comparable to what the best assembly programmers might be able to do. Furthermore, a Fortran compiler can more easily generate optimized loop code using vector instruction sets like Altivec or SSE2, whereas C compilers have a much harder time (again, because of the wide variety of loop structures possible in C, and things like pointer aliasing, etc.)
All is Number -Pythagoras.
I see these annoying questions all the time. "Don't tell me that a 30 year old whatever is the best we have!" Alright, I won't tell you. But, I'll tell everyone else, Fortran is sometimes the best language for the job, even after 30 years. It is simple, fast as hell and very robust. What's wrong with that? Oh, you can't write a gui in it or you can't have derived object classes? Tough, that's not what it was designed for.
Why is it that the age of a language or tool is associated with it being inferior? Do you feel that everything that was created prior to your birth is inadequate or inferior? It is in fact, very common for the earliest versions of many things to be far superior to newer ones. This is true, not just for for languages but also for many other things. Most often, the "improvements" and "advances" that are made cheapen, dilute, complicate and destabilize the original product. This is, at least partly to blame for the disposable society that we live in today. Better, or smaller faster cheaper, usually also means less reliable and durable.
To answer your question, yes. Fortran is still a very viable language and is still, after 30+ years, the best language for heavy number crunching. If you need to create a gui and have derived oject classes as well, just link to the fortran libs. But, I'm sure that some snot nosed whippersnapper will suggest that Perl is the only solution. Puhleez!