Comments on: Do people use Fortran? http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2009/do-people-use-fortran/ Weaving together Astronomy+Statistics+Computer Science+Engineering+Intrumentation, far beyond the growing borders Fri, 01 Jun 2012 18:47:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4 By: hlee http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2009/do-people-use-fortran/comment-page-1/#comment-941 hlee Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:20:39 +0000 http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/?p=3915#comment-941 Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I heard of TCL a few times. I'm glad that I didn't dig into it because I don't like nightmares. But knowing baseline languages seems important for me to understand how analysis is done, to dissect the analysis procedure for robustness, and to measure the reliability of quantification. Frequently, from data scientist perspective, I find that analysis packages are lack of algorithmic explanation, particularly when it comes to statistical inference where error propagation and dependency cannot be presented by one single sigma. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I heard of TCL a few times. I’m glad that I didn’t dig into it because I don’t like nightmares. But knowing baseline languages seems important for me to understand how analysis is done, to dissect the analysis procedure for robustness, and to measure the reliability of quantification. Frequently, from data scientist perspective, I find that analysis packages are lack of algorithmic explanation, particularly when it comes to statistical inference where error propagation and dependency cannot be presented by one single sigma.

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By: Elbereth http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2009/do-people-use-fortran/comment-page-1/#comment-939 Elbereth Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:20:13 +0000 http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/?p=3915#comment-939 I have been an undergraduate in Spain, and I can assure you we are still taught Fortran (in fact it's considered somewhat innovative, which is a bit surprising when you realise most of the teachers only know Fortran 77). I was lucky enough to get the only teacher that did work with Fortran 90 (The gotos give me the creeps, and the pseudo-pointers of Fortran 95 are even more scary). My experience in astronomy is brief, I'm a PhD student, therefore my knowledge of the subject is limited, but as far as I know that people working in high energies (X-rays and probably some people working in Gamma-rays too) used to rely on Fortran until very recently, due to the main analysis tool being XSPEC v11 (and previous versions), all based on Fortran, I believe. The newer XSPEC versions (v12+) are based on TCL (which I personally consider a nightmare of a language), and C/C++. So we are not really encouraged to learn Fortran nowadays, unless we want to work on modelling or MHD simulations, but it always comes in handy, if only to understand some of our tutors' quirks ;-) so we end up learning it anyway. The same could probably apply to C. I have been an undergraduate in Spain, and I can assure you we are still taught Fortran (in fact it’s considered somewhat innovative, which is a bit surprising when you realise most of the teachers only know Fortran 77). I was lucky enough to get the only teacher that did work with Fortran 90 (The gotos give me the creeps, and the pseudo-pointers of Fortran 95 are even more scary).
My experience in astronomy is brief, I’m a PhD student, therefore my knowledge of the subject is limited, but as far as I know that people working in high energies (X-rays and probably some people working in Gamma-rays too) used to rely on Fortran until very recently, due to the main analysis tool being XSPEC v11 (and previous versions), all based on Fortran, I believe. The newer XSPEC versions (v12+) are based on TCL (which I personally consider a nightmare of a language), and C/C++.
So we are not really encouraged to learn Fortran nowadays, unless we want to work on modelling or MHD simulations, but it always comes in handy, if only to understand some of our tutors’ quirks ;-) so we end up learning it anyway. The same could probably apply to C.

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