Re: Why these original FORTRAN quirks?

Gary Scott wrote:
Brooks Moses wrote:
I think Fortran's other big -- and largely unsung -- strength is its development model. As modern languages go, it's a little behind the state of the art, and will probably continue to be so (and I think this is probably a good thing). But it's also backward compatible for three decades. Thus, if I'm starting a new project today, and I expect that in three decades I'll want to be using large parts of it in stuff that's programmed with a relatively modern language three decades hence, I think there's really only one clear choice. C++ will be quite old by then, C will remain a painfully low-level language, and who knows where today's popular things will be. Fortran will still be a decade behind being up-to-date, and will be backward compatible.

You don't think that F2003 isn't a substantial catch-up? I can only think of a small number of improvements to increase its broad appeal.

I'll consider F2003 relevant to that timeline when we have a compiler, so give it a year or so. :) More relevantly -- yes, it's a substantial catch-up, but still most of the features in F2003 have been around for at least a decade. Certainly the biggest features of the "object oriented" parts are nothing new. Currently, F2003 seems roughly as modern as Java, give or take a little, and that's a decade old.

There are plenty of new features in programming languages that have been invented more recently than that. Some of them are good ideas, many more of them aren't. A few of the good ideas will also prove to be very useful, and will catch on.

So, in my opinion, about a decade behind "state of the art" is about the right place to be, for a long-lived language. I think it's about the point where it's clear what new ideas are worth adopting, and ideally it's also clear what mistakes were made in the first languages to use them, and how to avoid those mistakes. And I think the fact that right now you can only think of a small number of improvements that would increase the appeal to most programmers is a sign that it's about the right place to be, too.

- Brooks


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