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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

Fortran isn't that bad. With more modern compilers you can get rid of the real pain points like limited number of columns. It'd be my goto to do real scientific or numerical programming, its really a great language for that purpose.

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> It'd be my goto

I see what you did there.

I started off in FORTRAN77 in the 80s and then moved to C and C++, so I haven't kept current with FORTRAN. Does it still support COMMON blocks (shudder)?

Yes, they are still supported, though 'modern' Fortran style discourages using them for new code.

I'd feel no shame to properly use COMMON (via include) and GOTO with Fortran 2018. If this makes the code simpler, especially if meant to fit with older codebase.

Modern Fortran is like both C and C++ in the same language.

IIRC there was no INCLUDE in FORTRAN77 and the COMMON block would sometimes have different names for the same variable in different subroutines. Also the structure of the code we had to maintain (some of which was pre-FORTRAN77) was so horrific, that we would run it through a program called SPAG to clean it up. Happy days!

"...An important practical extension to FORTRAN 77 was the release of MIL-STD-1753 in 1978. This specification, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, standardized a number of features implemented by most FORTRAN 77 compilers but not included in the ANSI FORTRAN 77 standard. These features would eventually be incorporated into the Fortran 90 standard.

- DO WHILE and END DO statements

- INCLUDE statement"

- IMPLICIT NONE variant of the IMPLICIT statement

- Bit manipulation intrinsic functions,..." [1]

[1]: https://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/FORTRAN+77

Fortran has officially had the concept of modules for 35 years, which just made its way to the C++ world in 2020. It's the people who cannot update and sync with contemporary technology and remain stuck to COMMON blocks.

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