ivanpribec

Reminds me of spreadsheet-fortran (https://github.com/lwsinclair/spreadsheet-fortran), a project creating a VisiCalc lookalike in FORTRAN 66, which even runs on a PDP-11.

*same translation unit as the call site

I can see the subtle distinction you make. The flang notes on array composition provide a good introduction to the way array expressions (https://flang.llvm.org/docs/ArrayComposition.html) are treated.

But in practice it looks like the elemental function must be in the same translation unit for vectorization to occur with compilers popular today. Explicit options like !$omp declare simd are a different matter (and have different pitfalls).

Both. :)

The "!omp simd" works very well IMO. In general however, the auto-vectorizer tends to do a pretty good job.

The NumPy part is a misconception. Fortran is used in SciPy however.

Personally, I like to think of Fortran as the language of large-scale numerical PDE and eigenproblem solvers. Most scientific and engineering problems boil down to one of these two.

Bjarne Stroustrup on Fortran users [1]:

> Fortran is harder to compete with. It has a dedicated following who [...] care little for programming languages or the finer points of computer science. They simply want to get their work done.

[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4263269

A few of these things exist already: - http: https://github.com/fortran-lang/http-client - sockets: https://github.com/modern-fortran/tcp-client-server - threads: https://github.com/interkosmos/fortran-unix

For "broadcasting" an array along a particular axis, you'll need to use the function "spread(source,dim,ncopies)". But mixed array/scalar expressions are indeed supported.

OpenMP support in Fortran will improve as flang matures. In OpenMP 5.0 "#pragma omp requires unified_shared_memory" was introduced. At LLNL, they are are currently building El Capitan (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/supercomputers/lawrence-...), a supercomputer using AMD MI300A accelerators which support this concept. LLNL is also one of the OpenMP ARB members (https://www.openmp.org/about/members/).

They do. Some national HPC centers offer Fortran courses including elements of Fortran 2018 [1,2], including the latest features. (Disclaimer: I work at one.) The Intel Fortran compiler already includes some Fortran 2023 features [3].

[1] https://doku.lrz.de/programming-with-fortran-10746212.html [2] https://doku.lrz.de/prace-course-advanced-fortran-topics-107... [3] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/r...

Historically, it has been easier for vendors to work in their own walled gardens, and get customers locked in, than it is to collaborate on open standards and APIs.

For fun, I wrote a CHIP8 interpreter in Fortran recently [1].

Fortran is still heavily used in computational chemistry, computational fluid dynamics, marine engineering, nuclear engineering, reservoir engineering, and numerous other engineering fields. Volcanologists use it to predict ash dispersal [2]. Biomedical companies use it for cardiac electrophysiology. Econometrists use it to do tax research [4]. Plasma physicists use it to design magnetic confinement fusion devices [5]. Astrophysicists use it for relativistic magnetohydrodynamics [6]. NASA uses it for all kinds of fluid dynamics-related purposes [7] (read jet engines and rockets), and so do they at CERFACS [8]. For all I know, some integrated circuit manufacturers probably use it use it [9]. It's also used in ham radio and probably some military agencies [10]. It's used in vehicle crash testing [11]. It's used in combustion simulation software [12], fire dynamics [13], hydrometallurgy (ore leaching) [14]. US Geological Survey uses it for ground-water flow modelling [15]. We could go on and on.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38920486 [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2008.08.008 [3] https://www.elem.bio/index.html [4] https://taxsim.nber.org/ [5] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2021.107986 [6] https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids9010016 [7] https://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov/ [8] https://www.cerfacs.fr/avbp7x/ [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Electromagnetics_Cod... [11] https://www.openradioss.org/ [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHEMKIN [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Dynamics_Simulator [14] https://youtu.be/-dvG270QttE?si=AO-ky0fGwkIEmXDx [15] https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/m...