Fortran for beginners

[Fritz]

I'm in the first year of mechanical engineering and can't afford a Fortran text book.

Does anyone have a beginners guide that would be suitable for the level I need to learn? I need to know that basics.

Thanks in advance my friends.

[Fritz]

Nobody knows?

[recon]

Maybe you will have better luck posting in the General Technology Forum.

[enigma]

I don't believe they're still teaching fortran...

MATLAB or LABVIEW (or both) are all an engineer could possibly need unless you're programming microcontrollers.

Anyway. Don't post another thread. Someone will move this over there.

EDIT: See? :smile:

[dduardo]

Are we still using Fortan? Your best bet is probable to try google.

[graphic7]

A programmer at IBM, Andruw Odylyzko, actually wrote a Zeta function root-finder in Fortran. Of course, it was compiled with the Cray Fortran compiler. That's once instance where Fortran sounds impressive.

[brewnog]

We learnt Fortran in 1st year Mech Eng. What a complete waste of time it was. I wholeheartedly second Enigma's MatLab comment, I've found it to be far more efficient and easy to use.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get hold of the link which I downloaded all my comprehensive Fortran notes from, but can't seem to find it at the moment. (If you're brave, try flicking through the uni site - http://www.umist.ac.uk.)

Good luck!

[Fritz]

Anyone else? I need Fortran notes really badly.

[Dodo]

Googling for it was really a good advice. It uses to be, in the general case.

A Google search for "fortran tutorial" brings this up (at the very least):

http://gershwin.ens.fr/vdaniel/Doc-Locale/Langages-Program-Scientific/Fortran/Tutorial/

Hope it helps.

[Fritz]

Why learn Fortran?

Fortran is the dominant programming language used in engineering applications. It is therefore important for engineering graduates to be able to read and modify Fortran code. From time to time, so-called experts predict that Fortran will rapidly fade in popularity and soon become extinct. These predictions have always failed. Fortran is the most enduring computer programming language in history. One of the main reasons Fortran has survived and will survive is software inertia. Once a company has spent many man-years and perhaps millions of dollars on a software product, it is unlikely to try to translate the software to a different language. Reliable software translation is a very difficult task.

[PerennialII]

Yeah to all above and its going forwards, new revisions are again up and when the going gets really computationally demanding, like in parallel processing with clusters etc., I still feel fortran has a lot to give ... also other than inertia using ages old kernels.

[Goalie_Ca]

matlab is derived from fortran and much of the syntax is swappable. Matlab is interpreted..


Perhaps mech eng's only learn 2 languages or so but us electrical engineers learn many more. Perhaps its because we design integrated circuits and electronics though. Still i hate it when people generalize about engineers and how they build bridges.

[PerennialII]

Still i hate it when people generalize about engineers and how they build bridges.

Tell me about it .... every time someone asks me something like "what is wrong with my car" or something related ... its just another exercise in anger management :yuck: !