Fortran 2018 Unleashed
Fortran 2018 (ISO/IEC 1539:2018) has been officially published by the ISO, so it is now the official Fortran standard, replacing the nearly decade-old Fortran 2008 (which was actually published in 2010). Since this is a copyrighted ISO document, you can't actually view it online for free, but you can view the final draft which is basically the same thing.
The final draft document for Fortran 2018 is 630 pages. By contrast, the original Fortran Programmer's Reference Manual, produced by IBM in 1956, was only 51 pages. The language has certainly changed a lot in 62 years. Modern Fortran is still the programming language of choice for many of us solving very large and complex computational problems in science and engineering. It is the only scientific programming language that does not compromise on speed in order to provide dynamic typing, a REPL, JIT, or whatever the latest computing fad is. It is the only scientific programming language that is an international standard. It is the only scientific programming language that has multiple complete implementations from different vendors. It has a far superior array and matrix syntax than C-based languages. Its syntax is straightforward and can be mastered by non-professional programmers. It's hard to write slow code in Fortran, even if you barely know what you're doing. Modern Fortran is object-oriented and also provides a standardized interoperability with C-based languages (nowadays this is quite useful for interfacing with Python). Fortran-based tools are used by NASA to design and optimize the trajectories of interplanetary spacecraft. The next generation of crewed spacecraft missions are being designed with Fortran-based tools.
Now, Fortran is not without its flaws (perhaps I will write a post one day on the things I don't like about Fortran), but it is still very good at doing what it was designed to do. Improvements added in each new revision continue to breathe new life into this venerable programming language.
See also
- Fortran 2018 [previous post]
- Fortran 2018, JTC1/SC22/WG5
- Fortran 2018 has been published! Dec 2, 2018 [comp.lang.fortran]