Fortran is not dead

If we speak mythical programming languages, we will have to talk about Fortran. It is a language focused on numerical calculation, designed in its beginnings for IBM computers and used in scientific and engineering applications and is the oldest of the high-level languages.

Therefore, Fortran was very important in computer science in the last century. You might think that nobody uses it anymore or something does. But the banking sector, in the scientific sector and in other companies that still use this language, pay good amounts of money for experts in the language. It is because of this that many programmers have turned their eyes to Fortran.

Getting GNU Fortran on Ubuntu 20.04 / 18.04

GNU Fortran is a Fortran 95/003/2008 compiler created by GNU. It is also known on the Internet as GFortran. It is open source, released under the GPL license. With the aim of creating a modern compiler capable of running on multiple systems and multiple environments.

The latest version available is version 9. It has many improvements in every Fortran version it supports. You can check the improvements here.

So, let us install GNU Fortran on Ubuntu.

First, open a terminal and add the Ubuntu test repository. This step is only for Ubuntu 18.04.

:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test

Next, refresh the APT cache.

:~$ sudo apt update

Finally, install GNU Fortran 9 by using this command:

:~$ sudo apt install gfortran-9

Then, check the installed version.

:~$ gfortran-9 --version
GNU Fortran (Ubuntu 9.3.0-10ubuntu2) 9.3.0
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Now, let us test it. Create a new file called hello.f90. And add the following.

:~$ nano hello.f90
program hello
write(6,*)'Hello world. Welcome to osradar.'
stop
end

Press CTRL + O to save the changes and CTRL + X to close.

After that, compile it using the terminal.

:~$ gfortran-9 -o hello hello.f90

Then, run it.

:~$ ./hello
Hello world! Welcome to Osradar

So, everything is working.

Conclusion

Fortran is a very old programming language. However, there are sectors where it is very important and that is why there are still tools for the language. In this case, we have Fortran and the GNU Fortran compiler.

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