Question for engineers: Have you heard of the programming language called FORTRAN?

If you have, what can u actually do with it? How doesn't help in engineering? Cos I reading about aerospace engineering degree and it says you'll be learning it with matlab

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Reply 1

pleasedtobeatyou

FORTRAN is just another programming language...like Matlab

I'm guessing in the aerospace engineering course you're applying for, they'll be using Matlab.

Reply 2

bigboateng

Original post by pleasedtobeatyou

FORTRAN is just another programming language...like Matlab

I'm guessing in the aerospace engineering course you're applying for, they'll be using Matlab.

Oh I see, so there's nothing special about it. Because I'm still wondering what programming language they use to program planes but still haven't found anything, thought fortran might be it

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Reply 3

Old_Simon

I haven't heard of it since 1976.

Reply 4

bigboateng

Original post by Old_Simon

I haven't heard of it since 1976.

Lol, I guess new programs like matlab have taken over it

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Reply 5

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by bigboateng

If you have, what can u actually do with it? How doesn't help in engineering? Cos I reading about aerospace engineering degree and it says you'll be learning it with matlab

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I have heard of the name, but never actually came across it.

Reply 6

Old_Simon

The first computer I used was one of those house sized affairs. A couple of nice girls typed up our pathetic "programmes" onto tape.......then we put it in a thingy............a millisecond later it was all over. Trust me I was a pioneer lol.

To be serious Fortan is widely used in many applications to this day.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 7

pleasedtobeatyou

Original post by bigboateng

Haha, a programming language just for planes :biggrin:

If anything, most of the programming you'll be doing will be to model the fluid flow rather than anything to do with the plane itself.

Reply 8

JuliusDS92

FORTRAN is still used by physicists, I believe.

Reply 9

a10

FORTRAN was a language used for stuff like finite element analysis in engineering and engineers at the time did not have the software now such as ANSYS for example so they would often create code in FORTRAN to perform tasks like FEA.

My lecturer told me this a week ago :tongue:

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 10

Joinedup

Fortran was designed in the early days of computing for techies to do their calculations with rather than being targeted at databasey dp projects. it has features like an inbuilt built complex number type for instance.

there's still quite a lot of legacy fortran code knocking about but IMO I think it'd be hard to justify starting a brand new project in fortran.

a couple of years back I wanted to use a function someone had coded in fortran, I haven't ever done any fortran so I was able to compile it with gcc and link it to a driver program I'd written in C.

Ada was being used for a lot of onboard safety critical stuff at one time, Ada is a more recent language designed to be easily verifiable.