The “does Python have variables?” debate

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 08 May 2014 21:02:36 -0400, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

> On 08 May 2014 16:04:51 GMT, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> declaimed the following:
> 
>>Personally, I think that trying to be general and talk about "many other
>>languages" is a failing strategy. Better to be concrete: C, Pascal,
>>Algol, Fortran, VB (I think) are good examples of the "value in a box at
>>a fixed location" model. Of those, Algol, Pascal and Fortran are either
>>obsolete or legacy, and C is by far the most well-known by people here.
>>(For some reason, few people seem to migrate from VB to Python.) Hence,
>>"C-like".
>>
>>
> 	Obsolete and Legacy? Fortran still receives regular standards 
updates
> (currently 2008, with the next revision due in 2015).

Although Fortran is still in use, and widely so, it is mostly used for 
accessing existing Fortran libraries rather than writing new 
applications. There may be niches where that does not hold, where people 
are actively writing new applications in Fortran, but they are niches. 
Today, Fortran is rarely used for general purpose computing, updated 
standards or no updated standards.

Fortran appears at number 32 in the TIOBE index, with a rating of 0.419%:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

which puts it below ML, Logo, D and Ada, at least according to whatever 
measure of popularity TIOBE uses. One might reasonably argue about 
precisely how often Fortran is used today, but I don't think one could 
argue that it is used more than (say) Java or PHP or even Perl.

There are common, mainstream languages in frequent use, like C, 
Javascript and Python; up-and-coming languages like Go and D which may or 
may not someday become mainstream; and long established (i.e. legacy) 
languages that once were in common use but today not so much, like COBOL, 
PL/I and, yes, Fortran. I don't think this should be controversial.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/