Fortran ?!?
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2024 2:03 pm
While running simulations in Solidworks I encountered an error message that indicated Solidworks (or more likely the analysis solver used in Solidworks) is using Fortran.
Fortran? Didn't that language die several decades ago? Mostly yes, but maybe it shouldn't have.
In a former life, I was charged with writing a vehicle dynamics simulation program. The front end of this simulation was in excel, with the code being written in VBA. After a couple of years of development we hired an engineer with a couple of decades of experience as a vehicle dynamicist, as well as a much stronger programming background than I had. (I didn't claim to be great at either.) When Dave came on board, he took the solver portion of the code and turned it into Visual Fortran code, which was then complied into a DLL to be referenced from Excel.
All of the "real" programmers gave/give him a hard time for using an ancient language. None of them believed him when he told them that he had done back to back comparisons, and despite what Microsoft and the rest of the world says, compiled Fortran code runs faster than compiled C+/C++/C# code, at least for heavy mathematical computations. To this day, no programmer wants to believe that their fancy new Visual Studio tools aren't as good as what was written in the dark ages.
As the company evolved, we eventually hired a degreed, experienced software engineer. Perry worked for Dave, and Dave challenged him to come up with a C DLL that outperformed his Fortran DLL. As I recall, the best the C could do was about 75% of the speed of the Fortran code. Now Perry and Dave are the only 2 people I know who believe Fortran still has a case use in the modern world. (Perry still won't code in Fortran, but he knows the truth.)
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In a former life, I was charged with writing a vehicle dynamics simulation program. The front end of this simulation was in excel, with the code being written in VBA. After a couple of years of development we hired an engineer with a couple of decades of experience as a vehicle dynamicist, as well as a much stronger programming background than I had. (I didn't claim to be great at either.) When Dave came on board, he took the solver portion of the code and turned it into Visual Fortran code, which was then complied into a DLL to be referenced from Excel.
All of the "real" programmers gave/give him a hard time for using an ancient language. None of them believed him when he told them that he had done back to back comparisons, and despite what Microsoft and the rest of the world says, compiled Fortran code runs faster than compiled C+/C++/C# code, at least for heavy mathematical computations. To this day, no programmer wants to believe that their fancy new Visual Studio tools aren't as good as what was written in the dark ages.
As the company evolved, we eventually hired a degreed, experienced software engineer. Perry worked for Dave, and Dave challenged him to come up with a C DLL that outperformed his Fortran DLL. As I recall, the best the C could do was about 75% of the speed of the Fortran code. Now Perry and Dave are the only 2 people I know who believe Fortran still has a case use in the modern world. (Perry still won't code in Fortran, but he knows the truth.)
