News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Technical milestone reached: global earth system simulati... by rongopo on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:50AM (#33139819)
Most of what they do in the Climate simulation arena uses fortran, this case not being an exception, reason being other language would be less efficient --- and thus more climate endangering emissions would be produced. Plotting and data wrangling is another story.
Re:Technical milestone reached: global earth system simulati... by origin_path on Sunday October 09, 2022 @09:22AM (#33140711)
They don't use FORTRAN because of efficiency or emissions reductions lol, they use FORTRAN because they always did and the sort of scientists who do modelling rarely see any reason to upgrade their skills or tools.

Programming is something scientists tend to study only as far as needed to get results that look right. This is how the most influential COVID model ended up being a 15,000 line student-quality C program with hundreds of single-letter name global variables.

Re:Technical milestone reached: global earth system simulati... by marshallward on Sunday October 09, 2022 @09:30AM (#33140777)
Fortran is no longer in ALL CAPS.
Re:Technical milestone reached: global earth system simulati... by TheRealKing on Monday October 10, 2022 @12:36PM (#33153480)
When will people learn it..
Re:Technical milestone reached: global earth system simulati... by rongopo on Sunday October 09, 2022 @09:44AM (#33140921)
They definitely stick to it, and it might be that they build convenient narratives about it. Mind you that the energy use of climate simulations is not trivial, or do you think such machine can be fed with a typical electric installation from a regular office?