Python programming

[John Ladasky]

On Friday, March 7, 2014 4:38:54 PM UTC-8, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Mar 2014 10:03:35 -0800 (PST), John Ladasky
> <j... at sbcglobal.net> declaimed the following:
> 
>>   More than once, I have queried Google with the phrase "Why isn't FORTRAN
>> dead yet?"  For some reason, it lives on.  I can't say that I understand
>> why.  
>
> 	Well, for one thing, no one can justify rewriting all the numerics
> libraries... LAPACK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPACK , NEC-2
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Electromagnetics_Code (and likely
> NEC-4).

I have used Numpy for years, and I'm pretty sure that Numpy calls LAPACK under the hood.  But if that is true, then I get LAPACK as a pre-compiled binary.  I didn't need a FORTRAN compiler until last week.

If one or two specialized applications are the only reason we are keeping a 50 year-old programming language around, I would be tempted to rewrite those applications -- in C, at least.  C's not dead yet!  (It's just resting!)