Originally published at: Fortran, a 70-year-old computer language, lands back on the top 20 most popular list | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
It’s a sign of how old Fortran is that its name is a portmanteau of “formula translator”, meaning that it’s a programming language named after the idea that there could be such a thing as a programming language.
I studied computer science in a previous millennium, and not only used Fortran but also programmed in Cobol using IBM 129 keypunch machines. I think the preceding class poked their code in a clay tablet with a stylus.
25 Likes
hmm… i wonder if it gets these ‘votes’ in the form of python numerical libraries?
and is gaining popularity thanks to the massive need for (scientific) number crunching. Welcome back Fortran,
It was my first language, Fortran, and it’ll always be near and dear to my heart for all its computed GO TO’ing out and in of the middle of computed DO loops … I[J][K]=42
10 Likes
Lucky you. I started engineering school in 1983, and they had just retired the punch card reader the year before. But we still had to learn Fortran.
10 Likes
FORTRAN was the language of Real Programmers. I was hired right out of high school to port the optical interferogram analysis tool FRINGE from a CDC CYBER 176 to a PDP/11. It had several overlays of both code and data in its various stages of execution. If filled one box of cards, which translated to one 8" floppy disk.
The unnamed COMMON statement was the most intriguing aspect to me. A block of memory that got redefined in every subroutine!
17 Likes
I’m pretty sure Fortran would have been more useful over the intervening time then knowing how to handle a deck of punch cards. (for the record I started CS in 1987, and did learn Fortran, but we didn’t use punch cards…and the Fortran class was actually a cross listed business class! They had nicer labs then the CS labs, so the most value I actually got out of that was knowing which labs to use in later CS classes!)
4 Likes
I worked for years as a High-Performance Computing sysadmin at a university and Fortran was a staple on the clusters. It’s never gone away, it’s just too good at its specific use case and every scientist (at least the ones who use HPC resources) is very familiar with it.
I’m only good enough to fix minor syntax issues myself. Prefer Python for my own use.
7 Likes
From the article:
It isn’t based on e.g., downloads of fortran compilers or libraries so just compiling using numpy/scipy would probably not count. If you were posting questions on stack overflow about how to add python interfaces to other fortran libraries that might count.
5 Likes
First job out of college was maintaining billing software wrote in Fortran.
Not exactly the ideal application for Fortran. It was all spaghetti code and could take days to make even a simple change.
7 Likes
Oh, it’s very code in here.
15 Likes
the turtle VAX!
1 Like
I wonder if this assertion still holds water?
“The determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language.”
– Ed Post, Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal , 1982.
12 Likes
What? No FORTH even in the top 100?
3 Likes
Assembly language at Number 8? Up from 14 last year.
What’s everyone writing for that needs such low-level programming - are we back to squeezing the last clock cycles out of a processor?
And does this mean the Amiga is coming back?
11 Likes
This brings fond memories of learning my first language, Fortran, on an Apple II running CP/M. High school in the 80s was so cutting edge. LOL
6 Likes
Mining cryptocurrencies?
10 Likes
I think the Visual Basic that’s on the list is VB.NET.
“Classic Visual Basic” is there because of all the people writing GUI interfaces in Visual Basic to track an IP address.
13 Likes
Loved FORTRAN. Back in the day we used strict F77 compliant FORTRAN that was truly host independent and device independent. Our code would compile and run on any brand machine that our customers might have. Back then it was DEC and IBM and Prime and CDC and Cray. Our code would compile and run on all of them.
7 Likes
I couldn’t stand FORTRAN. Glad it is coming back to punish a new generation of coders.
5 Likes
See the ‘Numerical Recipes in {insert language name}’ series for further examples of this! 
1 Like
