At the moment, I’m in favor of looking at F202y (hopefully out in 2028 for the 70th anniversary) as a chance to make a limited number of non-backwards compatible changes as well as add important new features. So my list of 5 (well, 6) things probably looks like
- generic programming (I’m worried about the power of our typing system, though)
- better rank-agnostic programming (maybe a subset of the generics or maybe like Mathematics of Arrays where we treat array indexes as function transformations)
- concise error handling (not necessarily exceptions)
- forcing explicit typing
- standardize minimal preprocessor support (cpp-like, presumably)
- minor language convenience features: +=, -=, …, non-SAVE initializations, multi-ASSOCIATE instead of nesting, etc.
An area that I can’t speak to, but that seems important is enhanced support for parallel computing and hybrid computing (DO CONCURRENT and beyond). It seems it’s what Fortran is for, these years.