Fortran vs Python - Newbie Question

[Alex Gibson]

"Beliavsky" <beliavsky at aol.com> wrote in message 
news:1174958090.292094.168150 at e65g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
> 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.

Sun also provides its sun studio ide and compilers(c , c++ and fortran) free 
of charge on x86 linux
just have to register for free.
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/

Alex