-xylon

-xylon t1_jabxwa6 wrote

I did an applied Math masters in 2016 and they teached us Fortran (Matlab too), along with the usual commercial software such as ansys + ofc all the PDE theory necessary.

Point being: it's niche but it's still there. Classmates who ended up tightly adhering to the masters career path now write Fortran for a living.

And don't try to sell me "but C++ does the same and it's better/more modern". I've written Fortran, I've written C++, and Fortran is neither arcane nor hard, especially when you use it for its intended purpose (FORmula TRANslation, i.e. physics sims), in fact it blows C++ out of the water in usability if you are not a computer scientist... Which is why physicists and mathematicians keep using it.

3

-xylon t1_jabmlj2 wrote

I'm not going to jump the "Fortran is dead" bandwagon as it is a language that continues to get used in simulation code and I feel it's never really going to be replaced. As you mentioned it has good properties for writing that kind of code, good compilers, etc.

That said, it is a very niche language, used mostly in the physics simulation & supercomputing world. And idk how popular NN are in that sector, but it seems to me it's a niche inside a niche... So you will need to dig a bit to get answers. Maybe the people at r/Fortran will know more.

7