Why is C used in many optimization libraries?

[Beliavsky]

@jacobwilliams

I’m also not a big fan of modern interfaces to old FORTRAN77 code, for the same reasons. Also, when you do that, the namespace of your project is still polluted with all those subroutine names, and you can still call them (with no interface checking) since nothing is requiring you to use the module. So if you forget, you are back in 1977 without realizing it. I have been bitten by this before in the past.

The FORTRAN 77 code could be converted to free source form with a tool and put in a module along with modern Fortran wrappers. The module can be declared PRIVATE with only the wrappers given the PUBLIC attribute, so that the FORTRAN code is inaccessible outside the module.

I am wary of rewriting code and introducing more bugs, but people will differ on this, based on how good they are at programming in general and how well they understand the algorithms in a domain.