Hi guys,
I just joined today and I’m completely new to Fortran. I am a graduate mechanical engineer and would like to deepen my knowledge in computational engineering, which is why I would like to ask you guys; what approach do you suggest to learn Fortran (from scratch - assume no prior knowledge of the language)?
Thanks for the help! Super excited to start :)!
Liam
Hi Liam,
welcome!
From my experience, learning by doing is the most motivating approach. If you have any kind of numerical puzzle (a 2D FEM solver for example) that you like to solve I would suggest to work on that. Fortran - Wikibooks, open books for an open world, Fortran Best Practices - Fortran Programming Language, Top (The GNU Fortran Compiler), … will equip you with the relevant background.
Once you have some basic knowledge, there are certainly many open source projects that will be happy about your contributions.
Welcome. The fortran-lang site has a New to Fortran tutorial and links to other resources, as does the Fortran Wiki.
Thank you! Will definitely keep these links handy. Completely agree with you with the learn by doing approach, in fact I learnt the LaTeX software for my dissertation this year doing just that.
Thanks! Will look into these!
Welcome Liam, and don’t hesitate to ask any specific Fortran questions on this forum. We’re here to help.
I found Milan Curcic’s fairly recent book, “Modern Fortran” (Manning, 2020) to be a great introduction. It has a good combination of approachability and modernness (there is a ton of material online about fortran77 and fortran 90… avoid that material to start with, in my opinion!)
Thanks a lot @hsnyder for that recommendation. @LiamPM21 if you’re located in the United States by any chance, I’ll send you a hard copy. Otherwise, DM or email me at milancurcic@hey.com and I’ll try to arrange ebook access for you.
I’m not from the USA. From a different continent altogether actually, as I am Maltese! Thanks for the offer, I will send you an email as I would be interested in reading it 
Overwhelmed by the responses and the warm welcome I’ve been given to the community. Thank you for all the responses. I look forward to eventually contributing what I learn to the forum in the future.
Thanks!
Welcome! If possible, perhaps begin from an existing code, perhaps your advisor will give you a code, and try to spend some time to understand it and modify it. However, if your advisor give you a very old F77 code, then it may be hard. Then perhaps after you are able to write your own simple code, you could quickly switch to modern Fortran asap.
The guys here are almost all experts in Fortran, and their suggestions are helpful.
Also, just realized that Milan Curcic is in this forum as @milancurcic, his modern Fortran book is good.
Good luck!