NOTE: this is a copy of the thread at the Linux forum. My apologies to those who have seen it there - I'm posting it here with the hope of getting more comments and feedback and generating some discussion amongst the Windows users.
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Fortran enthusiasts may have seen and/or be interested in the findings and observations in a recent open literature publication by Arabas, et al. at the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Warsaw. Here’s the link to this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1334
It is very interesting to read Arabas et al. find “that C++11/Blitz++, Python/NumPy and Fortran 2008 provide comparable functionalities in terms of matching the blackboard abstractions within the program code. Taking into account solely the part of code representing particular formulæ (e.g. listings C.21, P.17, F.20 and equation 4) all three languages allow to match (or surpass) LATEX in its brevity of formula translation syntax. All three languages were shown to be capable of providing mechanisms to compactly represent such abstractions as: • loop-free array arithmetics; • definitions of functions returning array-valued expressions; • permutations of array indices allowing dimensionindependent definitions of unctions (see e.g. listings C.12 and C.13, P.10 and P.11, F.11 and F.12); • fractional indexing of arrays corresponding to employment of a staggered grid.”
The authors make pointed comments about some of the limitations they faced with Fortran, “Three issues specific to Fortran that resulted in employment of a more repetitive or cumbersome syntax than in C++ or Python were observed: • Fortran does not feature a mechanism allowing to reuse a single piece of code (algorithm) with different data types (compare e.g. listings C.6, P.5 and F.4) such as templates in C++ and the so-called duck typing in Python; • Fortran does not allow function calls to appear on the left hand side of assignment (see e.g. how the ptr pointers were used as a workaround in the cyclic_fill_halos method in listing F.8); • Fortran lacks support for arrays of arrays (cf. Sect. 2.2).”
In addition, Fortran users won’t be surprised to read the following, but would do well to make a note of it: “Fortran is a domain-specific language while Python and C++ are general-purpose languages with disproportionately larger users’ communities. The OOP features of Fortran have not gained wide popularity among users. Fortran is no longer routinely taught at the universities [28], in contrast to C++ and Python. An example of decreasing popularity of Fortran in academia is the discontinuation of Fortran printed editions of the ”Numerical Recipes” series of Press et al.”
The paper points out a few other shortcomings in working with Fortran: " The built-in standard libraries of Python and C++ are richer than those of Fortran and offer versatile data types, collections of algorithms and facilities for interaction with host operating system. In the authors’ experience, the small popularity of OOP techniques among Fortran users is reflected in the library designs (including the Fortran’s built-in library routines). What makes correct use of external libraries more difficult with Fortran is the lack of standard exception handling mechanism, a feature long and much requested by the numerical community"
But the least surprising finding for die-hard Fortran coders will be, “The performance evaluation revealed that: • the Fortran set-up offered shortest execution times,”
What are your take-aways from this study? I request you all to post your comments.