Using Fortran - was RE: [ILUG] Commercial Fortran Compiler?

[Vincent Cunniffe]

bobb wrote:

> Justin hath declared on Monday the 19 day of January 2004  :-:
> 
>>As a matter of interest, why are people using Fortran out there? Is it a
>>case of legacy apps / code or
> 
> Oh sweet baby jebus yes...
> Large chunks (most?) of the computational code being used out there is
> Fortran.  Considering most of them aren't programmers (and those that
> are have better things to be doing), and, well, its there and its
> works, no one seemes to be that botherd doing anything about it....
> 
>>is Fortran still a better fit for some problem
>>domains?
> 
> Despite being hideous, its still fairly efficient.
> Apparently the way it stores arrays is well suited to the types
> of martrix operations you are likely to do on it...

My understanding is that it's primarily sparse matrices which Fortran is 
  best suited to. Try modelling a 1 million cubed array in C++ with only 
a tiny fraction of the space occupied and see how it likes it ;-)

As Bobb said, the code for huge amounts of Stuff is already written and 
out there in Fortran and in use, and until it's easier for those using 
the code to use something else, they will continue to do so.

Vin