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."

Comments

This is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

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*.

Bah... Slashvertisement...

Cue Fortrain Jokes

[locokamil]

"God is REAL unless declared INTEGER"

"Q: What will the scientific programming language of 2050 look like? A: No one knows, but it will be called FORTRAN."

"CS without FORTRAN and COBOL is like birthday cake without ketchup and mustard."

"Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice."

"The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change."

I'd actually venture that FORTRAN has more jokes about it than C. I for one welcome our FORTRESS-joke-making overlords.

Intellectual Fortress Commentary

[namtro]

Robert O'Callahan (a core Mozilla developer) had some fairly insightful comments on Fortress a couple of days ago I personally found interesting...

From the specification, it is Ugly

[XPulga]

I've seen this a couple of days before and bothered to skim through the specifications carefully hidden in the depths of Sun's site. I am not pleased with what I saw. Summarizing:

It seems that the only Fortran-esque side of Fortress is that it is aimed at scientific computing and number-crunching. Other than that, the programming paradigm of Fortress is based on object orientation and programming-by-contract. If Java smelled like Smalltalk, Fortress smells like Eiffel.

Fortress has focus on three basic things:

1) programming by contract (pre-conditions and post-conditions of a method)
2) Numerical and dimensional correctness
3) Keeping the programming language as close to mathematical notation as possible.

1) means that people will write more to achieve the same thing with some guarantee of correctness. Much like Java's enforcement of exception handling, an be easily misused.

2) means that Sun bothered to include kelvin, Pascal, meter, second, Newton and every Physical unit you can think of as language keywords, that all parameters should specify what unit they're in, and that the language will do some effort to prevent errors arising from adding oranges and bananas, or precision errors from summing milligrams to some hundreds of kilograms.

3) means that Fortress will make Perl look readable. Good part of the language specification deals on how the editor should render the source code onscreen. The logical AND operator is the upward-pointing wedge symbol of math. The logical OR operator is the downward-poiting wedge symbol. The Integer type is that special-font Z, and a real is that special-font R. The specification deals on how to represent these in an ASCII file, using a meta-language similar to TeX (but incompatible with).

Programming Fortress on anything other than Sun's own IDE will most likely be unfeasible. Think of every math operator you've seen. If you have experience with TeX/LaTeX, think of those 4 pages from symbols.dvi with all symbols you could use. Those are the Fortress operators. Sun has finally come with something mor unreadable and with more operators than Perl. And the operators aren't even ASCII, they're untypeable. The bitwise AND and OR operators are a weird thing I had never seen before (after 5 years of engineering, and 5 years as graduate student in CompSci).

That said, Fortress may even succeed as a niche programming language. But I still have two concerns left:

How will non-scientific code look on it ? Surely Fortress programs will want to open windows, and dialog boxes, access files and the network. The math-oriented syntax has all it takes to make UI programming uglier than C+Xlib.

Sun claims that Fortress is aimed at High Performance Computing. Sun released an alpha interpreter of Fortress, which is written in Java. What kind of sick language designer writes an interpreter in Java to demonstrate something related to High Performance computing ?

Re:From the specification, it is Ugly

[Coryoth]

It seems that the only Fortran-esque side of Fortress is that it is aimed at scientific computing and number-crunching.

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...

Other than that, the programming paradigm of Fortress is based on object orientation and programming-by-contract. If Java smelled like Smalltalk, Fortress smells like Eiffel.

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.

means that people will write more to achieve the same thing with some guarantee of correctness.

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.

means that Sun bothered to include kelvin, Pascal, meter, second, Newton and every Physical unit you can think of as language keywords, that all parameters should specify what unit they're in, and that the language will do some effort to prevent errors arising from adding oranges and bananas, or precision errors from summing milligrams to some hundreds of kilograms.

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.

means that Fortress will make Perl look readable. Good part of the language specification deals on how the editor should render the source code onscreen. The logical AND operator is the upward-pointing wedge symbol of math. The logical OR operator is the downward-poiting wedge symbol. The Integer type is that special-font Z, and a real is that special-font R. The specification deals on how to represent these in an ASCII file, using a meta-language similar to TeX (but incompatible with).

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