Why are most climate models in Fortran?
1–10 of 136 posts
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#2The tooling is stable so when you link to FORTRAN binaries the ABI tends not to bitrot. IMHO FORTRAN might get a borrow checker before C/C++ to be on parity with Rust for memory safety.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#31. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them.
2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathematics work. Compilers are optimized for calculation/math speed and large intensive calculations. From the outset, it could handle complex numbers, double precision, etc., etc. natively without having to resort to calling libraries/special routines as other languages had to do back then.
3. Scientific enterprise alongside mainframes and supercomputers have well established and stable ways of working including program and data exchange etc. Essentially, a well established computing ecosystem/infrastructure surrounds scientific computing that researchers know and understand well. There is no need to change it as it works well. Moreover, it's a stable and reliable environment when compared to other computing environments - Fortran was introduced long before the cowboys entered the computing field, back then the programming/computing environment was more formal and structured, this contributed to that stability.
For the record, Fortran was the first language I learned, and my programming back then was done on an IBM-360 using KP-26 and KP-29 keypunches and 80-column Hollerith cards.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#41. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them. 2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathemat…
It took until C99 for C to have complex numbers and `restrict`. Those are two features FORTRAN has had for a much longer time, right?
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#5Not only "climate models"... a large chunk of scipy is just a thin Python layer over decades-old Fortran code. That many physicists chose to use the real thing instead of the fisher-price interface speaks in favor of them.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#61. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them. 2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathemat…
Tested in the sense of test suites and formal proofs? That would be valuable to other disciplines using other tools.
But this article isn't about fundamental algorithms being correctly-implemented in an endowment of legacy code, it's about defending a siloed language choice, which seems like an antiquated concern to me.
I applaud anyone using a tool that works for them, but if it's good, then its users have accomplished things which transcend an individual tool.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#71. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them. 2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathemat…
It took until C99 for C to have complex numbers and `restrict`. Those are two features FORTRAN has had for a much longer time, right?
You're testing my memory now. If I recall correctly, at least complex numbers were in the WATFOR (University of Waterloo) FORTRAN-IV compiler that I used in 1968 on the System/360. (That said, I've always understood it was there from at least FORTRAN II.)
I seem to recall needing 'i' for vector stuff, Maxwell's equations etc. (If I'm wrong it must have been on the VAX FORTRAN-IV several years later.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#81. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them. 2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathemat…
Ahem ;-)
Somehow your mention of cowboys entering the field feels irritating, considering Kazushige Goto and his contributions to BLAS while being in Austin, TX.
Banzai!
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#9Something really strange happens when an industry sector is highly populated. Thinking, fortran vs javascript or freebsd vs linux.
Seems like a sector with high population and low barrier to entry is prone to illusory superiority that lowers the quality of the system.
Re: Why are most climate models in Fortran?
#101. There are thousands of scientific subroutines written in Fortran that are stable and well tested - in fact, there are well established formal libraries of them that go back over 60 years. The researchers know and trust them. 2. Despite the sneers and derision that Fortran has been subjected to from non-Fortran programmers over recent decades, Fortran is an excellent language to do intensive scientific and mathemat…
That makes it pretty clear that Fortran is set up to be the perfect foe to "latest has to be greatest" programmers.