Fortran

Anyone know where i could get a "demo" :) copy of Fortran 90/95/03? Thanks Brian

Real Fortran doesn't have the date code in its name, Fortran IV being the last such incarnation of which I am aware.

Later versions were known as Algol-Fortran.

There are links to Fortran compilers at

program in

Yes, to compose the program you can use either a general text editor like Emacs or even Notepad (on Windows) or use the IDE that accompanies many compilers. Then you can compile from the command line OR hit a button within the IDE that compiles the program. The process is the same as for other compiled languages like C, but it does differ from Matlab, which is interpreted.

The Fortran 95 language is essentially backwards compatible with Fortran 77, which you were probably using before, but it adds many new features, such as array operations as in Matlab. You also don't need to start the code in column 7.

There are links to Fortran tutorials at

You could start out with F, a clean subset of Fortran 95. Information about it and a free compiler are available at

Although I don't recommend starting with Fortran 77, you can buy a used copy of "Computing for Engineers and Scientists With Fortran 77" by Daniel D. McCracken, William I. Salmon on Amazon for only $2 used. That book was published in 1988 and covers Fortran 77, as the title indicates, but McCracken's first book on Fortran was published in the early 1960s. There are many other cheap used books on Fortran 77.

for what its worth, my daughter had to take Fortran five years ago in ChemE, but for my son in the same IT as of this year, it has been dropped from the curricula in favor of C++ (they do use excel and hand calculators and powerpoint)

gcc is the opensource compiler

daestrom