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from the it's-called-FORmula-TRANslator-for-a-reason dept.
While it may not be widely appreciated, the Fortran programming language is still a thing. Last year, NASA ended up being overwhelmed by the sheer number of responses to their contest to optimize a Navier-Stokes equations solver used to model aerodynamics, to be evaluated on the Pleiades supercomputer. Fastest implmentation would have won the first prize, however there were far too many to evaluate. Fortran is quite old but neither outdated nor complex and nothing beats it for number crunching. So in many cases it is still the right tool for the job.
Many thought that the competition will never start due to the lack of applicants. In fact, it was cancelled for the exact opposite reason.
Quoting NASA's Press Release: «The extremely high number of applicants, more than 1,800, coupled with the difficulty in satisfying the extensive vetting requirements to control the public distribution of the software made it unlikely we would achieve the challenge's original objectives in a timely manner.»
Next up, MUMPS?
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday November 28 2018, @10:22PM (3 children)
F77! 🙂
Does it make me old if my CPSC 231/233 courses were all in Miranda, Forth, Fortran etc., barely got to actual C in those years because the professors were all super old-school (actually YAY!), trying to entrench fundamentals and we were even "forced" into using VT-100s in first year just because? :)
(That is, unless you knew where the labs were that you could go in and use the SparcStations, especially in the engineering dept. and still be able to log into your cpsc account?!) 🙂
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @12:38AM (2 children)
Real men use Fortran IV.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:37AM (1 child)
And punched cards.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday November 29 2018, @04:40AM
Replying to self:
...on computers that have real blinkenlights.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.