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A comment on Fortran. Parent comment

Re:Fortran by 8organicbits on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:08AM (#37292305)
When a job I'm interested in uses a language I haven't used before I say that I've learned a couple already and I'll quickly learn the next one. I'd generally say each additional language has been easier than the last. I've landed contracts to code in languages I didn't know and got positive feedback about my performance.

Is there anything unique about Fortran that prevents experienced engineers from quickly learning it on the job?

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Re:Fortran by reikonomusha on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:16AM (#37292367)
The language itself? In broad strokes, not really. The typical tooling? Definitely yes, it's usually very HPC centric (MPI, OpenMP, batch job schedulers, ...).
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Re:Fortran by soco on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:44AM (#37292579)
I assume all this specialized tooling will be a hurdle in the learning process. It's not like you can spin up a docker image and hack on.
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Re:Fortran by sampo on Monday August 28, 2023 @08:10AM (#37292827)
Perhaps in the future, learning how to run native binaries on bare metal, will be viewed as learning specialized tooling.
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Re:Fortran by 8organicbits on Monday August 28, 2023 @10:38AM (#37294749)
I haven't used it, but shifter looks like an MLI on docker toolset.

https://docs.nersc.gov/development/shifter/examples/

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Re:Fortran by 8organicbits on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:52AM (#37292644)
People are reasonably expected to learn k8s or React on the job, and those have a learning curve as well. Are MPI/OpenMPI much more difficult than those? I suppose that's a hard comparison to make. At first glance it doesn't look too crazy to me.

https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~youse/openmpi/#/7

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Re:Fortran by mafuy on Monday August 28, 2023 @08:11AM (#37292838)
MPI is trivial to learn. CS students here are expected to use it for typical scientific tasks within a few hours of lessons. Complex use cases take some time to understand backgrounds (e.g. multi partition configurations, profiling, infiniband, ...) and it's possible to become a specialist, but that's very rarely needed.

But MPI, in most use cases, comprises far less than React does, so it's not a fair comparison.

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Re:Fortran by throwaway_woxx7 on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:45AM (#37292590)
> Is there anything unique about Fortran that prevents experienced engineers from quickly learning it on the job?

No. I think that Fortran is a convenient scapegoat for LANL, not an actual obstacle. I discuss what I think the real problem is in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37292569

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Re:Fortran by sampo on Monday August 28, 2023 @07:45AM (#37292594)
> Is there anything unique about Fortran that prevents experienced engineers from quickly learning it on the job?

Perceived prestige, or rather the lack thereof. People with CS background often feel that learning Fortran is beneath them.

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Re:Fortran by zoomablemind on Monday August 28, 2023 @10:43AM (#37294823)
> ...prevents experienced engineers from quickly learning it on the job

The problem is in the longevity of Fortran. The variety of codes accumulated through time makes up for more than one Fortran. Modern Fortran may appear as a new language, yet still very compatible with 'classic' Fortran. MPI adds another dimension to learning it, though there's tooling around it.

The aspect of tolerance to single letter variables and cryptic function names could also be a factor, no kidding.

In general, asking for prior experience with Fortran is reasonable, just as hiring someone to "quickly learn" C on the job is quite non-pragmatic.

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