Fortran 77
I am taking an Econometrics course at UNC this semester and the professor wants us to use Fortran. I did not know anything about Fortran, except that I did not ever plan to use it. I spent last semester teaching myself C++. I suppose it can’t hurt to know it though, but seriously, what kind of language makes you start every line on column 7? I can write my entire C++ program on one line if I want! I understand that the strict formatting rules were used for historical reasons, because the programs were written on punch cards, but you have to admit that it seems a little odd now. At least Emacs will format the code for me automatically.
I know Fortran’s supporters claim that it is faster than C and C++ for scientific computing, but with optimized template packages like Blitz++ I don’t think this argument is so clear cut anymore. There are some benchmark results to support this.
I decided to use GNU Fortran 77 (f77) because the GNU Fortran 95 compiler
doesn’t look complete yet, not that I would know the difference at this
point. I have found the following free books and resources for Fortran 77:
Page, Clive G., Professional Programmer’s Guide to Fortran77, 22 February 1995.
The link is for a tarball that contains the book in HTML format.
Chivers, Ian D., and Jane Sleightholme, Interactive Fortran 77: A Hands on Approach, Second Edition, 1990.
This one has a quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide on page 1 so it can’t be all bad. The link is to a PDF file.
Press, William H. et. al, Numerical Recipes in Fortran 77, Second Edition. 1992.
This one is pretty standard and well-known, although it’s more for people who already know Fortran and have a specific numerical problem to tackle.
The Fortran FAQ, 3 January 1997.