Why physicists still use Fortran (2015)

4 hours ago

Fortran remains dominant in high-performance computing (HPC) for large-scale physics simulations like astrophysics, climate modeling, and molecular dynamics.
Legacy Fortran code is prevalent in physics research, encouraging reuse due to its validation and efficiency, saving time over rewriting.
Fortran is considered easier for physics students to learn than C++, with intuitive array handling, built-in parallelization features like coarrays, and less complexity with pointers and memory management.
Fortran's array syntax and operations (e.g., element-wise functions, slicing, dynamic allocation) are more natural for numerical computations, aligning with physicists' mathematical thinking.
Compiler optimizations in Fortran, such as handling memory aliasing and intent specifications, can lead to efficient code without manual intervention, though benchmarks show C++ can be similarly fast.
Fortran continues to evolve with modern standards (e.g., Fortran 2008/2015) and interoperability with languages like Python, ensuring its relevance, while new languages like Julia emerge as potential future competitors.

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