In the May issue of the Tiobe Index, the 67-year-old programming language does Fortran a surprising entrance into the top 10 list of the most popular languages, writes InfoWorld.
The programming language was originally developed by IBM and first appeared in 1957. But if you thought Fortran was dead, you have to think again. The language is under active development, with Fortran 2023 as the latest version.
The reason why the popularity of Fortran has increased steadily in recent months, according to Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, is that the language is used to some extent for mathematical and numerical purposes – an area within software development that is becoming increasingly important.
At dev.lfortran.org you can try out Fortran in the browser. view more
Fast, mature and free
Jansen writes that although there are many competing languages within mathematical/numerical data processing, there are good reasons why Fortran is “made for life”. These are the competitors, according to Jansen:
- Python: Most popular, but is slow
- MATLAB: Easy to use in mathematics, but has an expensive license
- C/C++: Popular and fast, but no built-in support for mathematical calculations
- R: Somewhat similar to Python, but less popular and slow
- Julia: Not mature enough yet
– In this jungle of languages, Fortran seems to be fast, has built-in support for mathematical calculations, it is mature and free. Quietly, slowly but surely, Fortran is gaining a foothold. It is surprising, but not to be denied, writes Jansen.
Thursday 21 November 2019
8 positions in Norway
A quick search on Finn.no shows that here in Norway there are currently eight vacancies that mention Fortran. Most are typically positions in research environments.
“Experience in software development in Python is required and knowledge of Fortran is beneficial“writes the Meteorological Institute, while SINTEF Ocean wants someone who has “experience with the software languages Python, C/C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, Fortran, Qt, Angular and Docker or equivalent.”
If you want to play around with Fortran, you can do so in the browser here.
Tuesday 16 June 2020
It should be added that the Tiobe index is somewhat debated. It is supposed to be an indicator of the popularity of programming languages, and is created by, among other things, looking at the number of developers, courses and companies that deal with the languages. The index is calculated by collecting data from popular websites such as Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Bing and around 20 others.
But whatever one may think about how correct the index is, the changes within each individual language can still be interesting.
Here is the list of the 10 most popular languages, according to the Tiobe index:
