FORTRAN in 100 Seconds

Fortran is the world's first high-level procedural programming language developed at IBM in the 1950's. It made programming accessible to the average human and is still used today for scientific computing.

#science #programming #100secondsofcode

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🔖 Topics Covered

- History of Programming Languages
- When was Fortran invented?
- Who created Fortran
- Is Fortran still used?
- Fortran basics tutorial
- What is Fortran used for?

[Alimenteocerebro]

I was not expecting the code to be so clean and simple.

[Kim_Miller]

I started learning Fortran in 1968, my first year at university studying electrical engineering. Walking around campus with stacks of cards was the top nerdy status symbol - other than drinking. A year later we headed to a lecture and found the TV set up in front showing the moon landing. No lecture that day as we watched the whole broadcast. And then we found out that the moon landing mission was written with Fortran. It put us all among the stars for that moment.

[coachafella]

First programming language I learned many decades ago. Discovered I had a knack for it, diverted my studies from electronics to software. Was the beginning of a long and prosperous career. Very grateful for that course.

[archstanton_live]

When I learned Fortan in the early '70s the university computer center was open 24/7. All the serious geek students would be there in the wee hours as early AM had the best turnaround time for card batches on the 360.

[sebastiangudino]

Cool to see Fireship showcasing the hot new technologies. Surely this one will blow up soon

[StephanWahlen]

My dad was a convinced Fortran user for 30+ years. He did use it to perform FFTs on gigantic complex number matrices and solve huge complex differential equations for his job. They performed cutting-edge radar imagery with a language that was invented 50 years ago! At almost real time!

Now he's happily retired and all i learned at uni is matlab and java :(

[bruceharms]

Fortran was my first language. One correction, programmers wrote their code out on paper. Data entry operators then typed it onto punch cards. Loved this by-the-way, brought back so many memories.

[bsy]

This is the language that I got taught in my second semester of electrical engineering back in 2014, this is how I learned the fundamentals of programming and why it was so easy for me to grasp programming with newer languages now that I'm self learning to switch careers.

[prince_of_devils]

Punch cards had an 80 column limit, which is why many programmers still use the same limit in their text editors.

The reason why we always use 'i' as the variable in a for loop also comes from Fortran. Because of the 80 character limit, code had to be as small as possible, and since 'i' was the first (implicit) integer available, that was used.

[jstrandquist]

As someone who has actually had to use Fortran for physics research, I appreciate this greatly. It's old, weird, and creaky, but at least it has a relatively small keyword list and none of those obnoxious semicolons.

[joelinpa]

I programmed in Fortran 77 back in the early 1980s. It was my favorite language until I got a job programming in C. I still have fond memories of my days with Fortran on a DEC VAX 11/780.

[billbeverly]

I am retired from an Aerospace company, and back in the early 80's I was as assigned to JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) and the ground software was all written in VAX/VMS FORTRAN. I spent 14 years working there mostly in FORTRAN then in Ada (an ungodly language). Other programmers wanted to work in c and c++, but when layoffs hit, they kept us FORTRAN people because no one else wanted to do it.

[daniel-wood]

Definitely did not expect this one. Gave me flashbacks to my first year scientific computing class, where I had to code everything in Fortran

[pavfrang]

It is also a full OOP language. Classes, whole array operations and operator overloading are among the most favorite features of Fortran. [For negative responders: criticizing older versions such as FORTRAN 77, is the equivalent of criticizing pre-ANSI C, which is not quite normal. Do not criticize unless you know what you are talking about: just check the features of the latest version of the language: Fortran 2018. Computer scientists and electrical engineers were never taught (modern) Fortran; Fortran was used mainly by mechanical and aerospace engineers. That's the only reason that you do not know it. Fortran is best for a single thing: fast calculations, nothing more.]

[DaveTexas]

Man, this brings back memories. I had an Apple II — after I got tired of my Radio Shack TRS-80. I just did BASIC on those, though, taking my high school’s very early computer science class. I didn’t learn FORTRAN until college. We spent a lot of hours in the engineering computer labs working on our programs. I’d bring my coffeemaker with me and we’d sit at those computers until the middle of the night. The world sure has changed in 40 years. Now, we carry our computers with us everywhere and use them to order coffee...

[philipwakeling]

I started engineering school in 1972. FORTRAN IV was my first exposure to high level programming. It ran on the university’s DEC PDP10. It’s still a pretty friendly language.

[PhilipSmolen]

I took a FORTRAN class in college in the 90's. Even back then my professor asked "Why are you here?" He knew FORTRAN from when it was necessary, and he wanted us to use things that were more modern.

[mr.norris]

I think this would be a great point to introduce OpenMP (and later on MPI). OpenMP works great with both C and FORTRAN

[strayling]

Yes, more please. Modern languages owe a lot more to FORTRAN than it's given credit for. A fun one is in the development of those optimising compilers you mentioned, where trying to develop a good FORTRAN compiler led to all sorts of ways to design better languages.

[bsvenss]

I programmed Fortran on VAX/VMS many years ago and we did verify the assembly code generated (Aircraft Industry). Sometimes we coded directly in assembler. We did some tests and came to the conclusion that you only gained about 6% - 10% performance by coding assembly code directly vs in Fortran. It was so optimized.