Why physicists still use Fortran

Re:Why physicists still use Fortran by sidlls on Sunday December 18, 2016 @08:36PM (#13208869)

Nothing prevents a person from doing that, but that isn't what folks doing scientific computing are interested in, generally speaking. Some are, sure, but in aggregate as a matter of what the "day to day" is, it's just not of much interest.

I mean, maybe I was an outlier, but when I was in academia I wanted to have my models compute as accurately and quickly as possible, and I generally didn't have much time for or interest in the computer coding beyond the necessary implementation details required to conduct my research.

Telling me "implement an extension", then, would have made me roll my eyes and go back to fortran.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why physicists still use Fortran by jerf on Sunday December 18, 2016 @09:44PM (#13209153)

I don't think the idea is necessarily that you personally implement an extension, but that "someone" needs to implement it and the bar for "someone" to do so is lower if it can be done via extensions or libraries rather than having to be done in the core. That someone should share their work, of course, and that someone may find they have a feature or two they have to get into core, but even that's easier than sticking a whole whackload of changes into core.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why physicists still use Fortran by Manishearth on Monday December 19, 2016 @01:03AM (#13209748)

You don't have to implement an extension. It already exists.

https://bluss.github.io/rust-ndarray/master/ndarray/index.ht...

[ Parent | on HN ]