Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Why Scientists Are Still Using FORTRAN in 2014

Posted by timothy on from the why-change dept.

New submitter InfoJunkie777 (1435969) writes "When you go to any place where 'cutting edge' scientific research is going on, strangely the computer language of choice is FORTRAN, the first computer language commonly used, invented in the 1950s. Meaning FORmula TRANslation, no language since has been able to match its speed. But three new contenders are explored here. Your thoughts?"

1 of 634 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Q: Why Are Scientists Still Using FORTRAN in 20 by Nemyst · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This. I have many friends in the physics dept and the reason they're doing Fortran at all is that they're basing their own stuff off of existing Fortran stuff.

    What amused me about the article was actually the Fortran versions they spoke about. F95? F03? F08? Let's be real: just about every Fortran code I've heard of is still limited to F77 (with some F90 if you're lucky). It just won't work on later versions, and it's deemed not worth porting over, so the entire codebase is stuck on almost 40 years old code.