this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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What heinous crime one must commit to be forced to learn fortran
Pursue a particle physics degree
Source: I've been at my masters thesis for two years please kill me
You got this bro 👊
Nah my death wish is too passive
That’s… ambiguous.
Huh… Not my intention.
I wasn’t wishing them success with their thesis /s
You both got this and don't got this at the same time?
Isn't Fortran more or less Basic with Maths?
No. For several reasons.
Fortran is older than Basic and C. In fact, Fortran is more or less the first high level programming language. The first Fortran compilers date to the early 1950s.
Fortran was created mainly for the purpose of linear algebra: operations with (giant) matrices. Linear algebra is used to compute approximate solutions to ordinary and partial differential equations, and this is a major part of what people needed computers for (and still do).
Programming concepts like subroutines, functions, if statements with blocks and else clauses... All of those were not in original Fortran because no one had thought of them. These things entered Fortran over time as they became popular, and goto slowly became less popular. Syntax from the punch card era was replaced in Fortran 90, but it is still available as an option for compatibility purposes.
Structurally, I prefer to describe Fortran as like C, but with better built-in arrays, and no built-in general purpose pointers. Not having the pointers allows the compiler to do certain optimizations that C can't. But C is the better systems language, because the pointers let you naturally express all kinds of data structures besides arrays.