Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#2Using Fortran in Jupyter CNA be extremely handy to learn certain algorithms by interactive exploration. Despite all the nice and modern alternatives, Fortran is so popular in HPC world that still generations of students will have to learn it.
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#3There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen?
There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#4You can try it online: https://mybinder.org/v2/gl/lfortran%2Fweb%2Flfortran-binder/... !
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#5There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen? There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#6There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen? There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
Modern Fortran is really nice when it comes to matrix arithmetic. I really wish it were more widespread and there were more libraries for data loading into the language. Having written a lot of CV/Robotics related code in Python and C++, I find that often there are errors in coding which you may not catch till runtime. For instance matrix dimension mismatch will not be caught in OpenCV or in Python till you actually execute the code. On the other hand, these things can be hard coded into Fortran 2003 and the compiler will perform the checks before you shoot yourself in the foot.
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#7There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen? There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
An important advantage that doesn't get mentioned a lot is that modern Fortran (imo f90+) is much simpler to write and reason about that C++, precisely because it limits what you can actually do in the language. That opens up the possibility for engineers and scientists to contribute to writing HPC code. If everything was in C++ then the ability to contribute would be available to a smaller number of capable programmers, and that's where Fortran still has a reasonable niche
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#8There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen? There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
I'm going to take this in good faith and assume that you are thinking of old school FORTRAN77. Modern Fortran (90 and onwards) is a very different language in many ways whilst maintaining high backwards compatibility. You should check out modern versions of the language and code examples.
Fortran is a language more suited for numerical computing than C++. Modern Fortran is simpler, more maintable and more easily optimised than C++. Yes one could pick a subset of C/C++ and write fast numerical code but it would require more work and more discipline than using modern Fortran.
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#9There seems to be a missing question in the FAQ: Why is Fortran worth saving? What are the advantages of writing code in Fortran? Why not just allow the ports to C++ to happen? There might well be good answers to these; but it seems that if you want to make Fortran cool again, you have to provide a vision for what makes it special.
I'm going to take this in good faith and assume that you are thinking of old school FORTRAN77. Modern Fortran (90 and onwards) is a very different language in many ways whilst maintaining high backwards compatibility. You should check out modern versions of the language and code examples. Fortran is a language more suited for numerical computing than C++. Modern Fortran is simpler, more maintable and more easily opti…
Where does the Modern Fortran community congregate? Any websites or mailing lists?
Re: Creating LFortran, an interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM
#10Not sure what they mean by lack of support for GPU - Intel Fortan has this and I am sure others do.