What's the FASTEST Computer Language? C++ vs Fortran vs Cobol: E04

We test over 80 computer languages, from Ada to Zig, to find out which is the FASTEST of all time. In this episode Dave focuses on Fortran vs Cobol, testing each against the other and then against C++ to see how fast the languages of the 1970s really were.

[AgapitoHampaslupa]

Reading COBOL code is just like reading an angry person's text message

[justinrowan]

I had to take a COBOL course in college... we had to turn our programs in on a floppy.
In 2009.

[Obscurai]

Another old joke:
Q: How are COBOL and pregnancy similar?
A: Miss one period and you're in trouble.

[JeoshuaCollins]

Fortran is still a popular language and receives updates. I just downloaded the AOCC Flang compiler, optimized for Zen 3 processors and the AMD Epyc platform specifically.

[alexgregory]

Fortran is the bedrock of computational physics. It was my first programming language. Ever. In 2016!

[vastexpanse]

I've known FORTRAN since 2011 (Atmospheric Sciences), it is still a main language used in computer weather modeling.

[chriswareham]

As someone that has coded in FORTRAN 77 and Fortran 95 (yes, they changed the case of the language name), I can say they are very different beasts. The former is close to the original versions, with strict column formatting to fit on punch cards. The latter is heavily influenced by C, and could be arguably considered a completely new language.

[connorskudlarek]

Looking forward to more of this series. The mini dives into each language are awesome.

[connorskudlarek]

This series is one of my favorites on YouTube. Really like the short dives into each language.

[PaulMJohnson]

That was great. I've not heard the God is real joke for at least 20 years!

Really looking forwards to the top 5 episode!

[johnburr]

So "implicit none" kills God. Got it.

[KyleHarrisonRedacted]

Some say The Stack materialized out of the result of the first punch card ever executed
Love this series!

[TheKeppto]

Come on Dave it's been 6 months since a new episode! You can't keep us in suspense for this long!

[giorgioelgar]

Cobol is actually quite an important skill because lots of businesses are looking for people to maintain their legacy code

[flynnfittz]

This surely took a while. But I'm glad it's finally here.

[TheFishyrabbit]

Fortran is a language of now, the best to do linear algebra in by far. Mostly because of the big daddy library of them all, glorious LAPACK. When I did linear algebra in C++ I still called back into Fortran. FYI, I am 30.

[ddichny]

I've found that different language libraries can have wildly different efficiencies in their "get_current_time" functions, and it can be a heavyweight call in any case (relative to any purely CPU-based calculation). As such, by putting the time function in every pass of your loop as you do, you may be measuring the speed/slowness of the "time" function more than your "calculate" pass.

I'd suggest instead doing an initial "get time", then a fixed (large) number of your calculation passes, then a final "get time" to determine the total elapsed time and dividing number_of_passes by elapsed_time.

[johannweber]

I'd like to notice that the Github repository also contains an object-oriented Fortran proram that shows a more modern Fortran code (the performance is similar or slightly faster than the shown version).

[scott]

Yay! Was looking forward to the next installment in this series.

[ejharrop]

Thank you and in my freshman days at UMass in 1967 I programmed in FORTRAN, yes using punchcards and turned them over to the night shift Data General card shredder. We got the mangled cards and a green bar printout saying, run failed. Lol. It took weeks to get a simple program completed. Used slide rule too so yes I am a dinosaur. Enjoy the videos and look forward to the next. Cheers