Re: Is FORTRAN a dying language? (not a troll)
From: Dan Tex1 (dantex1_at_aol.com)
Date: 05/08/04
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Date: 08 May 2004 17:54:28 GMT
From: Curious Curious@person.net
>My boss immediately attacked me, saying that FORTRAN is NOT a dying
Well. That depends on your definition of dying. :-)
Percentage-wise, Fortran appears to have a smaller market share than it used
to. However, it also appears that the total amount of Fortran usage has risen
considerably. This would tend to suggest that Fortran may still be growing,
though maybe not as fast as some other languages out there.
>Personally, I think my boss hasn't been on a college campus in decades,
>and has no idea of the extent to which FORTRAN has been on the decline.
Well, you may find that many college campus's and the "apparent" knowledge
that goes with them is not always as "up-to-date" and correct as we would like.
When it comes to computers, the "word" on what is in and what isn't is often
passed down from the Computer Science gurus. However, most of those guys
aren't immensely involved in the needs of engineers and scientists and others
doing intense numerical work. However, they often DO influence other peoples
thoughts on what languages are here to stay and which aren't. Keep in mind
also that most of these guys have never written a line of Fortran code in their
lives. Most have also never written even a "simple" finite element analysis
program ( though, my use of the word simple is probably inappropriate there ).
>The industry we work in is very specialized and there aren't a lot of
>young engineers in it, so we aren't exposed to the changes going on in
>the computer science field. And we don't write or update much code...
>MOST of the codes we use were written before I was born!!
The fact that you don't write or update that much code or too often is IMHO a
very large reason to go with a language which is as easy to learn and
comprehend as possible. Thus... one question to ask is "what language will a
future engineer pick up the easiest?"
>I'm not here to attack FORTRAN. I'm just trying to make a good
>business decision, because it will impact our industry for several
>decades at least. To me, it's a very simple equation: in computers,
>technology is either growing, or it's DYING. Just because there are
>people running OS/2 doesn't mean it's not dying. So, the question to
>me is: are there more people programming in FORTRAN today than there
>were five years ago? And, will many engineering graduates in 2020 be
>proficient in FORTRAN?
I don't think the answer to this last question is very helpful. IMHO, in
2020, most engineering students probably won't be proficient in ANY language.
I do know that today, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of engineering graduates are
not proficient in ANY language. You do get a lot of engineers who think they
are simply because they had an intro programming course in school. However, I
find that in reality, most of them are awful at programming. Only a very,
very, very small percentage of those graduating engineers will ever become
proficient at programming. Of course, that's not so hard to believe. If they
are going to write engineering programs, first and foremost, they have to
understand their engineering inside and out. If they don't... it won't matter
what language they use. Their finished product will be undependable.
IMHO, this is where Fortan comes in as a viable language. Relatively
speaking, I find it to be a very straight forward and easy to read and write
language. Thus, I have time to get my engineering right and then do the
programming to go with it. Other more difficult to understand languages would
force me to spend more time on the language and less on the engineering.
Couple the ease of Fortran with it's general speed of execution ( even when
programmed by a relative novice ), and I think you have a winning combination.
Real Life Example:
Where I work... a team of several engineers have just completed ( or nearly so
) a large code. It took them 6 years to write working full time. They are all
engineers and they chose C++, largely because they all seem to believe that
the future is there. It has a finite element analysis engine at it's core.
They didn't write that part. They got that from a college professor down the
road a ways. Well, I was recently beta testing their code. All I can say is
that their code has more bugs in it than my back yard does.
I've written similar code myself that does the same work as theirs. I wrote
mine all by myself and in my spare time at home ( not 8 hours a day as they
did ). All of my code was written sporadically over about a 3 year period. I
did this while still having a life with my wife and 2 very young, demanding
children. To date, many people have used my code. I'm the only one who has
ever found any bugs in it and those were incredibly minor and only showed up
when I really put some awful input-data into the program. They were also very
easy to find and fix.
What's more, my coworkers code runs at least 20 times slower than mine.
And... that's on small problems. The mulitplier goes up as the problem becomes
larger.
So... what is the relevance of this to your situation? If you are going to
have code that is going to be maintained and updated by future engineers, you
really ought to pick a language that is going to be as simple as possible to
read, by engineers who probably aren't ace programmers or even anything
remotely close. And, your future engineering graduates aren't likely to be any
better at programming than the engineers of today are. IMHO, fortran will
still be around in 20 years, at least as long as the "truly" technical people
who need it have a say in things ( that's certainly not a given ). Thus... I
agree with your boss that Fortran may indeed be a good choice for your company.
Dan :-)
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