What are your favorite and least favorite things about Fortran?

[zaikunzhang]

@zaikunzhang

Favorite:

1. Native support for matrices (I mean automatic arrays in particular; allocatable arrays are OK but automatic arrays are closer to mathematics).
2. Intrinsic support for matrix/vector operations: matrix addition/multiplication, transpose, slicing, broadcasting, …; without such intrinsic functionalities, a language should not be called a “formula translator”.

I am very glad to note that the LFortran webpage lists the native support for matrices and matrix/vector operations as the top two highlights of Fortran:

Some highlights:

• Multidimensional arrays which can be allocated and indexed as the math/science dictates (not restricted to start at 0 or 1) and can be sliced as desired (as, e.g., in MATLAB);
• Operators which operate naturally upon the aforementioned arrays/matrices, as they do scalars;

This is reassuring, because I thought I was among the minority when regarding such support as a core strength of Fortran, and I even thought I totally misunderstood modern Fortran.

Now, it seems that my understanding of Fortran is at least akin to the viewpoint of LFortran developers. Great! This viewpoint is also an indication that LFortran will pay more attention to the robustness and performance of intrinsic array procedures such as matmul. This gives me yet another reason to look forward to using LFortran for my projects, in addition to many others including interactivity.