Slashdot Mirror
Should Undergraduates Be Taught Fortran?
Mike Croucher writes "Despite the fact that it is over 40 years old, Fortran is still taught at many Universities to students of Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and more as their first ever formal introduction to programming. According to this article that shouldn't be happening anymore, since there are much better alternatives, such as Python, that would serve a physical science undergraduate much better. There may come a time in some researchers' lives where they need Fortran, but this time isn't in 'programming for chemists 101.' What do people in the Slashdot community think?"
My brother is both a mechanical and structural engineer and he uses Fortran for creation of simulations of simple to moderate complexity. I built him a FreeBSD box with an open source Fortran compiler and he uses this box for said work. I know nothing of Fortran myself. My brother just needed a UNIX machine and didn't want to spend untold sums of money for an HP-UX workstation. My brother seems to feel there is a lot of value in knowing Fortran. Personally, it looks evil to me. I like C/C++
Lee Smolin, the physicist, writes that "Smart people should not program". He used to program, and at one point insisted that his department continue to teach physics students programming. But then he realized that the needed functionality was either available off the shelf or could be written by lower level people. So he now recommends against wasting students' time on programming.