Fortran vs Python - Newbie Question

[Beliavsky]

On Mar 26, 10:16 am, cla... at lairds.us (Cameron Laird) wrote:
> In article <1174918424.125068.176... at y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,Noma... at gmail.com <Noma... at gmail.com> wrote:

> >Is there a mac version??
> >Thanks
> >Chris
>
> Yes.
>
> Several, in fact--all available at no charge.  The Python
> world is different from what experience with Fortran might
> lead you to expect.

Your experience with Fortran is dated -- see below.

>
> I'll be more clear:  Fortran itself is a distinguished
> language with many meritorious implementations.  It can be
> costly, though, finding the implementation you want/need
> for any specific environment.

Gfortran, which supports Fortran 95 and a little of Fortran 2003, is
part of GCC and is thus widely available. Binaries for g95, also based
on GCC, are available for more than a dozen platforms, including
Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. I use both and consider only g95 mature,
but gfortran does produce faster programs. Intel's Fortran compilers
cost about $500 on Windows and Mac OS and $700 on Linux. It's not
free, but I would not call it costly for professional developers.

Speaking of money, gfortran and g95 have free manuals, the latter
available in six languages
http://ftp.g95.org/ . Final drafts of Fortran standards, identical to
the official ISO standards, are freely available. The manual for Numpy
costs $40 per copy.