Learning Fortran: Exploring One of the Oldest Programming Languages Still in Use
By
lioeters
Kettled twice. Extra chewy, extra trustworthy.
Summary
The article is a personal account of the author's decision to learn Fortran, one of the oldest programming languages, instead of more modern languages like C, Go, or Rust. It covers Fortran's history as FORmula TRANslator created by John Backus at IBM in 1957, its evolution through various versions (FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, 95, 2003, 2008, 2018), and its continued relevance in scientific computing and high-performance computing. The author discusses why they chose to learn Fortran, its modern applications, and the practical aspects of getting started with the language.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledFortran, which stands for FORmula TRANslator, was created at IBM by John Backus in 1957 for scientific applications and has apparently been popular for high-performance computing and benchmarking supercomputers in recent years.
While I probably should be learning a language like C, Go, or whatever new trendy language the ThePrimeagen mentions on Twitter (OCaml?), I'm going to attempt to learn Fortran.
Fortran has had several subsequent releases since then; FORTRAN 77, Fortran 90, Fortran 95, Fortran 2003, Fortran 2008, and the latest Fortran 2018.
Who needs Rust when we have Fortran?
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