Modern language with the advantages of FORTRAN?
I've been working with a lot of FORTRAN 77 lately, and though I had reservations at first, I now see some great qualities of the language. It is:
- Simple to learn (no object-oriented or functional-programming complications)
- Easy to read
- Blazing fast at number-crunching
Those qualities are naturally attractive to non-programmer engineers and scientists who just want a way to make a computer give answers quickly. But it has a lot of limitations based on its age and some of its basic assumptions. I'm skeptical about how easily non-programmers can understand some of the added capabilities of later versions of Fortran, as well.
Is there a modern language that is as straightforward as FORTRAN, just as fast for mathematical applications, and less limited? Or is the answer Fortran 90, 95, 2003 . . . ?
Answer
Or is the answer Fortran 90, 95, 2003 . . . ?
Yes. Fortran 95 supported by most compilers is the language you are looking for. However Fortran 2003 has some major enhancements (besides unnecessary from your point of view support of OOP) which might be useful. Compiler Support for the Fortran 2003 Standard.