Learn Fortran with Tutrial.
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Why
still talking about Fortran ?
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Fortran is one of the oldest programming languages
around. It has survived and thrived through the years,
despite its disadvantages due to:
 | Its
large user base among scientists and engineers.
| The
vast number of (high quality & fully debugged)
existing library code (eg. most of the codes in Netlib
are written in Fortran).
| The
existing engineering & scientific codes already
written in it.
| Its
relative ease of use & simple learning curve.
| The
fact that its simplicity, along with some of its
conventions (eg. non-equivalence of subroutine
arguments) and the work put by compiler people over
these decades have made Fortran compilers produce
extremely fast code, making it usually the best
language to write a code is speed is the only
consideration. |
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Why
learn Fortran ?
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Fortran is the dominant programming language used in
scientific applications. It is therefore important for
science graduates to be able to read and modify Fortran
code. From time to time, so-called experts predict that
Fortran will rapidly fade in popularity and soon become
extinct. These predictions have always failed. Fortran
is the most enduring computer programming language in
history. One of the main reasons Fortran has survived
and will survive is software inertia. Once a
company has spent many man-years and perhaps millions of
dollars on a software product, it is unlikely to try to
translate the software to a different language. Reliable
software translation is a very difficult task. |
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Why
not C or C++ ?
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First of all, Fortran is the easier language to learn,
and it is specially designed for scientific and
engineering applications. That means you can start
immediately to write programs that do useful
calculations for your research or class work. Fortran is
the language used for most (but not all) major
scientific computing projects. C and C++ are certainly
both useful languages to know too, but they are a bit
more complex and thus harder to learn. C is stricter
about grammar and syntax than Fortran. The best way to
learn C++ is to first learn C; And for scientists, the
best way to learn C is usually to learn Fortran first,
as long as you also learn proper style and develop good
habits designed to carry over to C. The grammar and
style suggestions given in this course are all designed
to develop proper programming methods and good habits,
so that you can then go on to learn C, and perhaps C++,
or any other programming language you may need. |
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| This site is special for
Fortran 90 & 95 engineers: http://www.mhhe.com/engcs/general/chapman/ |
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