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Sun Releases Fortran Replacement as OSS
sproketboy writes "Sun Microsystems has released an alpha version of a new programming language called Fortress to eventually replace Fortran for high performance scientific computing tasks. Fortress was designed specifically for multi-core processors and is published under the BSD license."
All they do release under an OSS license is an *interpreter* of the language. This is completely worthless for high-end number crunching. Wake me up when they open source a good optimising *compiler*.
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I wrote a Fortran program that printed out a calendar with the year in a banner font at the top. It took 57 cards (no library calls etc, beyound PRINT). Try do anything useful in 57 lines with today's languages.
It shouldn't surprise you... but I use fortran quite a lot today. A lot of the oddball limitations and weirdness are gone in Fortran 90/95... though I still use Fortran 77. It is still an amazingly useful and fast language to code numerical stuff in. Yes indeed. No need for any math.h in this programmer's world! I just hope this Fortress business is just as fast as fortran, because if it's not... you won't see many fortran guys switching over. The main reason (as far as I'm concerned) that we're still using it is that it is fast, and simple. OOP belongs in business... not in Molecular Dynamics.Mike.
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In recent times, we've seen all kinds of credit given to companies that have nothing more than vaporware (I don't dare mention anything from Apple here or I'll get modded as troll) and yet Sun, like them or not, is giving back. Perhaps they are not giving back things that you will immediately use or notice, but they are giving back, making it open source, working to stay relevant. That last phrase was on purpose.
They are doing this in complete (nearly) opposition to the position that MS takes. I think Sun deserves a little credit. The did (sort of) open some of the hardware as well, and while that may not fall into hobbyists hands soon, it is a start. Opening (in any meaningful fashion) some high end hardware is a big thing.
No, I don't have tons of Sun hardware or software at home, but I do use it at work, and its incredibly stable, if not super easy to administrate.
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Not sure if you're being sarcastic or ignorant. One of Sun's latest jewels is the 8 core Niagara and it behooves them to come up with ways of keeping all 8 cores going on a processor.
Try do anything useful in 57 lines with today's languages.
Given that DeCSS can be written in six lines of illegible Perl, I shudder to think of what a Perl coder could accomplish with 57 lines...
-Stephen
Which is to say, its aimed at the niche that Fortran, despite how old and creaky it is, still rules. The world of programming has come a long way since Fortran, but nothing matches it for scientific computing and number crunching. To be honest that's about the only aspect of Fortran worth keeping...
You say that like it's a bad thing! Eiffel is, surprisingly enough, a very nice language to work in. I'd be very happy with a language targetted toward numerics (And with real math style notation to boot!) that was as pleasant to work with as Eiffel. Design by contract is a good thing, and importantly it is optional. You can specify a contract or property for a function, but you don't have to. The ability to flesh out an API with contracts and properties is a damn good thing - something far too many languages lack.
Contracts and properties are optional. If you don't want correctness guarantees then don't use them. On the other hand if you would like a little more insurance... well then they're very useful indeed.
Again, specification of units is optional. If you don't want to worry about units then don't use them. Then again if you're writing some physics code then having the sanity check of unit analysis to make sure everything is working properly is a damn useful thing to have available. Having dimensions and units as not more onerous than having types - it is simply another level of checking available; the benefit here is that the units are optional: if you don't want the extra checks, don't use them.
Well that depends on who you are really: Fortress looks incredibly readable to me. Then again I am a mathematician and look at math, formatted in exactly that way, all the time. If you spend all day looking at Java and C code then sure, it's going to look unfamiliar to you. Then again, you probably aren't in the target market for a language aimed specifically at scientific computing. To me a lot of C looks awful and can be hard to read because of its requirement that you pound everything into basic ASCII. It really all depends on what you're used to. As to how easy it is to enter - sure it would be nice if it was straight TeX - but then it is so similar that there is really no problem learning it. If you actually do a lot of math then you can name all those symbols straight away, and what you have to type in to get the symbol is simply it's name. Again, not ideal for people who don't do a lot of math, but then that isn't the target audience. If you do much math then the symbols look right instead of being the ugly ASCII kluges of other languages, and
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Another possibility is that the program used a lot of indices (for 1 and 2 (or more) dimensional arrays) and the fortran version had subscript checking on. My experience is that subscript checking can add (undex VAX VMS) up to 20 to 30 percent to the run time. My experience is also that this catches at least 1/3 of my errors and is definitely worth it.
Fortran (and Ada) are languages that understand arrays.
In C, an array is a pointer, an offset, and a prayer.
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