[Numpy-discussion] Fortran was dead ... [was Re:rewriting NumPy code in C or C++ or similar]

[baker.alexander at gmail.com]

My two pence worth, my experience is across python, C++ and fortran (and a few other languages) and the posts here are interesting and relevant. I think that the true value of any of these languages is knowing any of them well, if you happen to work with other folks who share the same skills more the better. No more than that.

As a user of a very old large very fortran codebase as well as engineer of more structured approaches, I would take the OO toolset everytime, for reasons already covered.

The real challenge I see every day in scientific community is the lack of software craftmanship skills, code archiving, unit testing. End of two pence.

Alex
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-----Original Message-----
From: Dag Sverre Seljebotn <d.s.seljebotn at astro.uio.no>
Sender: numpy-discussion-bounces at scipy.org
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 20:12:21 
To: Discussion of Numerical Python<numpy-discussion at scipy.org>
Reply-To: Discussion of Numerical Python <numpy-discussion at scipy.org>
Subject: Re: [Numpy-discussion] Fortran was dead ... [was Re:
 rewriting	NumPy code in C or C++ or similar]

On 03/16/2011 08:10 PM, Ravi wrote:
> On Monday 14 March 2011 15:02:32 Sebastian Haase wrote:
>> Sturla has been writing so much about Fortran recently, and Ondrej now
>> says he has done the move from C/C++ to Fortran -- I thought Fortran
>> was dead ... !?   ;-)
>> What am I missing here ?
> Comparing Fortran with C++ is like comparing Matlab with Python. Fortran is
> very good at what it does but it does not serve the same audience as C++. The
> typical comparisons work like this:

<snip>

I think the main point being made by most here though is that *in 
combination with Python*, Fortran can be quite helpful. If one is using 
Python anyway for the high-level stuff, the relative strengths of C++ 
w.r.t. Fortran that you list become much less important. Same for 
code-reuse: When only used from a Python wrapper, the Fortran code can 
become so simplistic that it also becomes reusable.

Dag Sverre
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