Is Fortran "A Dead Language"?

Re:Is Fortran "A Dead Language"? by tovej on Friday January 12, 2024 @10:20AM (#38969057)

C is very much also alive in games programming, binary security research, embedded systems, HPC, and as a target language for simple compilers. Oh, and as the lingua franca of all foreign function interfaces. And there's still a thriving vommunity of people writing C purely for fun (e.g. see obfuscated c programming competition).

I think it's completely fair to say that Fortran is dead because only physicists use it. And there is no way to justify any similar statement for C.

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Re:Is Fortran "A Dead Language"? by medo-bear on Friday January 12, 2024 @12:22PM (#38970937)

I understand that C is far more used than Fortran. Of course I also dont think C is dead. I was trying to make a statement about saying Fortran is just alive in scientific computing. While this is mainly true, scientific computing is so huge that it is quite a big thing to be alive in it.

And no, I don't think only physicists use Fortran. If you really think this then you probably dont quite understand the ecosystem of numerical computing. Besides if only Physicists use Fortran and is otherwise dead, I hardly think, for example, that AMD, Intel, and Nvidia would bother releasing optimizing compilers just for Fortran.

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