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FORTRAN is the #$%&ing devil!

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 9:46 pm
by Falco Girgis
I swear to god, the STUPID, braindead douche who invented FORTRAN is probably burning right now.

Fortran has officially earned the permanent title as the MOST meaningless and useless, pathetic language ever. The most simple of things in ANY language (hell maybe even ASM) proves to be a #$%&ing pain in the ass in fortran. Fortran is like everything you hate about every freaking language on the planet (particularly blitz) crammed together.

My dad's college homework was simply to make a loop that kept asking for input until the user pushed enter without typing anything in and displayed an everage. I've worked for about an hour and a half, and I've given up.

Lemme tell you of some of the limits. 7 letter variables, apparently you can't add two variables, just a variable + a const.

Just every little thing.

Code: Select all

PRINT *, 'Look at me, I'm a fortran programmer!'
READ *, VARABLE

IF (VARABLE .EQ. "SOMETHING")
    PRINT *, 'Holy crap! an IF statement worked'
ENDIF
I'm sure that wouldn't work, but I don't care. I'm not even going to try to make it work. That's just basically how it works, except I have to define the program name, and do all of this other gay stuff.

The syntax is ugly, C/C++/Perl/JavaScript/PHP/VisualBasic/Java/Python/Anything else on the planet, EVEN BlitzPlus ownz it by a long shot. It is SO pointless. Why would you ever freaking do anything on fortran EVER? Those limits, it's monstrosity? I'd rather code everything in nothing but 100% ASM than that.

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 3:12 am
by MarauderIIC
IIRC, it's extremely super highly optimized for extreme calculations. Used in programs for engineering.

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:24 am
by JS Lemming
Well, how do you do extreme calculations if you can't even add 2 variables?

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:33 pm
by vmrob
I agree. it is evil. but like maurador said: it is good for calculations.

i downloaded a molecular dynamics simulator and it is qriten in fortran. i can't use it .. i don't know how.

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:23 pm
by Falco Girgis
Yes, but nowadays languages like C/++ would be even better for calculations because of the ease at which you can perform them. Even if C/++ isn't as optimized for calculations (it sure is more optimized for everything else), it is still better in every way IMO.

FORTRAN was good -- what, 50 years ago? Why the hell don't they teach the chemists and chemical engineers an alive, thriving language that'll actually be useful? At the end of the book it says:

The next step is to learn the C programming language because it is better in blah blah blah...

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 5:22 pm
by vmrob
i want to join the cult!!!!

anyways. fortran is evil. i can't understand it. and it was built 50 years ago so.....

c++: umfig?

Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2004 5:57 pm
by Falco Girgis
Fine, welcome to the cult of David bowie, my brother.

Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 6:35 am
by vmrob
god loves me today.