67 years ago on October 15, 1956, The programming language FORTRAN, short for "Formula Translation," was introduced to the public.
It was the first general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language, originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications. FORTRAN gained popularity and became a vital tool in scientific and engineering applications
The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. This ranking is organized according to their popularity as of Sep 2023:
(1) Python
(2) C
(3) C++
(4) Java
(5) C#
(6) JavaScript
(7) Visual Basic
(8) PHP
(9) Assembly Language
(10) SQL
(11) Fortran
(12) Go
(13) MATLAB
(14) Scratch
(15) Delphi/Object Pascal
(16) Swift
(17) Rust
(18) R
(19) Ruby
(20) Kotlin
#Fortran 2023 passed its final ISO ballot, with 16 country votes in favor, no objections. Look for publication in late October or maybe early November. #HPC
@DoctorFortran Excuse me. #Fortran still exists? Why? I first learned coding with #Fortran in 1974. What is the valid reason for its continued existence? Serious question.
@crankyclown@DoctorFortran #Fortran is surviving because it is well adapted to its ecological niche: scientific computing. Fortran is fast (compiled language) and its syntax is relatively simple and close to the mathematical formulas.
For example, many climate models use Fortran, either directly or in libraries used by other languages.
Of course it has evolved dramatically since 1974, with 6 standards: FORTRAN 77, then Fortran 90, 95, 2003, 2008 and 2018. And soon 2023...
Sometimes I do contrarian things, just for the hell of it. Especially if I'm annoyed. I was recently annoyed that loyalty didn't cut both ways.
So I decided to write a program to generate an AI monthly song challenge. And because I was in a contrarian mood I decide the language of choice was FORTRAN.
I wanted the output to look 'retro' so I wanted it to be a console program, and because it was FORTRAN, I wanted to make sure it was cleanly structured. FORTRAN is know for being susceptible to writing dirty linear code.
FORTRAN can be structured just like other languages. I created a separate module to house the Open AI related functions - getting the API key, getting the completion back from the prompt and then parsing the JSON that was returned.
There are a number of ways to store API keys so that they do not end up committed to a repository along with the code. Here I chose to use an environment variable that I set on my machine. This guarenteed that the API key was not in the code itself.
Making the API call itself to OpenAI from FORTRAN was more interesting. In the end I decide to make it call curl to handle this, which worked just fine. I regard this as analogous to using a library in a more modern language. Another way to do this would have been to write the call in C and then use the linker to link it to the FORTRAN program. This would still have been dependent on libcurl.
The response from the API is provided in JSON, and as it turns out there is a well specified JSON library available for FORTRAN - json_module. The documentation for this and examples are fairly non existent though, so it took me quite a bit of trial and error to find the code on how to descend into objects to retrieve the text of the response.
Finally because I wanted a retro console look, I had it feed this output to the 'remind' command to display the calendar with the chosen theme for each day.
In the end it was a fun rabbit hole to make a language developed in the 1950s do something very 2023.
@r_ivorra #Fortran feels no hurry: it was in the TIOBE Index Top 20 for 9 months in 2021 (the year it went back), 5 months in 2022, and already 7 months in 2023. A total of 21 months on the last 33 months (starting from January 2021): https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
@r_ivorra
Yes, #Fortran stands for "Formula Translator". It is still one of the major language in the scientific field. But #Python has also been adopted a lot for computation (often using Fortran libraries) on the desktop. #Matlab is also using a lot of Fortran libraries. And there are also #C++ and #Julia.
Being a compiled language, Fortran programs can run fast, as C and C++.
For example, many climate models are written in Fortran or use Fortran libraries.
@mjgardner@ChristosArgyrop #Fortran feels no hurry: it was in the TIOBE Index Top 20 for 9 months in 2021 (the year it went back), 5 months in 2022, and already 7 months in 2023. A total of 21 months on the last 33 months (start from January 2021): https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
@nosherwan Can we get an applause for #fortran? it’s memory safe, it’s the fastest language around, and it has no obnoxious fanboys. Also you can NOT write smart contracts in it.
Fortran is officially more modern than C++ 😄
A new revision of Fortran (2023), is about to drop and it includes an HTTP client. 🤯 https://fortran-lang.org #cpp#fortran
Leider wusste ich in den 90ern nicht, dass #basic bei DOS dabei war - ich hatte nur die „Shell“-Programmierung mit GOTO und IF ERRORLEVEL gefunden und bin damit schnell an Grenzen gestoßen
#pl1, #pascal , #Cobol, #fortran waren damals richtig gute Sprachen. Zumindest war der Code im Nachhinein noch lesbar und einigermaßen nachvollziehbar.
languages that are involved in some sort of data analysis and processing (#sql, #clang /c++) are doing very well. Not sure what to make of #Python; are ppl in #AI seeing through the reality is a scripting over extremely performant c/c++ and that there are other lang that can glue as well? #golang & #Julia are ⬆️
OTD 1965: IBM announces the System/360 Model 67, their first system intended for time-sharing, and support virtual memory. Lots of interesting history around this machine. A thread: \ #ComputerHistory
lukewarm take (had this talk in private with @mia but I have to share this):
#Rust is the best thing to happen to #Ada and they should be used a lot more (especially Ada). Moreso, I believe that Rust is essentially FP Ada with C syntax.
Now let me cook (this will be a multi-toot series). Ada, like Rust, is extremely type safe and stringent (they reach memory safety through different paradigms, but they end up having equivalent levels of memory safety).
Ada is more procedural/OO while Rust is more functional, from that POV they fit together perfectly. They're both fast languages with a lot of checks.
Rust can benefit from what we Ada people have with #SPARK and actually be able to prove that your program does what it says without a shadow of a doubt (SPARK is so good that it overshadows #MISRA C which is the gold standard for critical software made in C).
Ada can use Rust's popularity in open source and community (ideally not a toxic one at times), Rust can use Ada's proven track record of handling mission-critical tasks with no compromises whatsoever.
Ada can use Rust's successful marketing (holy shit does #AdaCore need to get involved more), Rust can use the lessons that Ada learned in its 40+ years of existence and improve upon them.
Rust can definitely benefit from having 1. an actual specification and 2. getting rustc certified (which would mean LLVM by extension), but those are behemoths and it's extremely unlikely, impossible even to audit. Lack of advertising leads to misconceptions, and misconceptions lead to not using the language (I use Tcl and Perl, so I definitely know how it feels to use languages that have been osbourned for 2+ decades).
@a13cui Thank you for these interesting posts! Although there is at least one other dimension I think you missed, and that is language stability. Rust changed A LOT and is still changing a lot and that is a no go for any serious commercial application. Combined with serious issues in the Rust leadership, as a company I would never use this language, not even for free.
The only overlap between these two languages is their focus on memory safety, but that's about it (in my naïve, unfounded opinion).
The only reason why Rust might seem interesting is that companies have access to a bigger Rust developer workforce, which is very small in the Ada world.
I was on a party last week and met two guys. One was 80 years old and still working in a company as a #Fortran developer. The other one was 65 years and still working as a #Pascal (Delphi) developer. Both work on serious industrial applications. It was a real joy to talk with them about how important language stability and longevity is.
The other day, a non-technical colleague said to me, “You’re a #Python expert, aren’t you?” I felt I had to correct him since I have only dabbled with the #language and I said that I’m more accustomed to scientific programming in #C or #Fortran. He looked a bit bemused and he then said “No, I meant #MontyPython.” Well, modesty aside, I said that I’m probably the most expert person there and so our conversation continued on a more humorous subject.
@Perl when I became Linux Server Amin 25 years ago, I learned Perl. Because I was looking for something beyond Bash and AWK.
I love this script language. Meanwhile I have the feeling that Perl is rather retrocomputing, is my feeling wrong?
In conversation with a friend yesterday, they bemoaned the gentrification of Python—the way that the cute little programming language neighborhood of the 90s was now crowded with the condos and up-market chain coffee shops of type hints and async I/O. I'm now stuck thinking about Fortran as a sturdy blue-collar part of town where people are mostly older and repair their own cars but a few younger folk with tattoos who take welding very seriously think they've found heaven.