Fortran

Scientific computing language used in HPC, climate modeling, and numerical simulation.

Overview

Fortran is a mature, actively developed programming language designed from the ground up for high-performance computing in science and engineering. The latest revision is Fortran 2023, with over a dozen open-source and proprietary compilers available.

The language excels at fast arithmetic computation over large numeric arrays with built-in parallelism support through coarrays, teams, events, and collective subroutines. Fortran is statically and strongly typed, allowing compilers to catch errors early and generate efficient binary code. It supports multiple programming styles—imperative, procedural, array-oriented, object-oriented, and functional—making it versatile for different problem domains.

Fortran is the dominant language of High Performance Computing and is used to benchmark the world's fastest supercomputers. It's particularly prevalent in numerical weather prediction, computational fluid dynamics, applied mathematics, statistics, and finance.

Key features

High performance and close-to-metal execution
Static and strong typing
Built-in parallelism with coarrays and teams
Array-oriented syntax
Multiple programming paradigms supported
C interoperability
Mature compiler ecosystem
Active language development

Pros

Optimized for fast arithmetic on large arrays
Excellent compiler optimization and code generation
Native parallel programming support
Mature and battle-tested
Dominant in HPC and supercomputing
Relatively small and easy to learn

Cons

Older language with legacy syntax in some areas
Smaller ecosystem compared to modern languages
Steeper learning curve for non-scientific programmers
Less suitable for general-purpose application development

Use this if

You need to write fast, numerically intensive code for scientific or engineering applications, especially for high-performance computing environments.

Skip this if

You're building general-purpose applications, web services, or need a modern language with a large ecosystem of third-party libraries.

Best for

High-performance computingScientific computingNumerical weather predictionComputational fluid dynamicsLarge-scale array computationsHPC and supercomputing applications

Alternatives

C++Python with NumPy/SciPyJuliaMATLABR

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