Fortran vs Python - Newbie Question

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1174958090.292094.168150 at e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
Beliavsky <beliavsky at aol.com> wrote:
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>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.
>

My experience with Fortran is indeed dated.  However,
I still work with university groups that balk at $500
for valuable software--sometimes because of admini-
strative conflicts with licensing (example:  the group
needs an educational license that fits its team 
perfectly, but educational license have to be approved
by a campus-wide office that involves the group in
expenses uncovered by its grants, and ... complications
ensue).  Intel's compiler, for example, is a great deal,
and recognized as a trivial expense sometimes--but
judged utterly impossible by a research group down a
different corridor.

My summary:  practical success depends on specific
details, and specific details in the Fortran and Python
worlds differ.

Also, Beliavsky, thanks for your report on the pertinent
Fortran compilers.  There *are* other proprietary Fortan
compilers extant; do you expect them to fade away,
leaving only g* and Intel, or are you simply remarking
on those two as the (intellectual) market leaders?