Update homepage with new faqs #609
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abrown41
commented
Dec 15, 2025
abrown41
commented
- Change 'FAQs' to 'why Fortran?'
- add some general information about Fortran's use historically and in the modern world
- link to fortranfuture.github.io
- add question 'I've been given a Fortran project, what do I do" to 'catch' users in that position and link to quickstart guide
- change order to put "why Fortran?" first, followed by Features
renamed FAQ section to "Why Fortran?" and added some high-level information about Fortran's role in modern society. Also added specific question about how to get started to link again to the quickstart pages.
…' into update_homepage_with_new_FAQs
Switched the order of FAQs (why fortran?) and features.
joewallwork
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joewallwork
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This reads much better to me and does a nice job of giving context. The additional section on the situation of being given 2M lines of Fortran is also beneficial - I imagine it's much more often the case that someone is asked to familiarise themselves with a Fortran project than to start a new one.
I have a couple of suggestions but they're very minor.
joewallwork
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Co-authored-by: Joe Wallwork <22053413+joewallwork@users.noreply.github.com>
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| Fortran has been designed from the ground up for computationally intensive applications in science and engineering. Mature and battle-tested compilers and libraries allow you to write code that runs close to the metal, fast. | ||
| Fortran is mostly used in domains that adopted computation early--science and engineering. These include numerical weather and ocean prediction, computational fluid dynamics, applied math, statistics, and finance. Fortran is the dominant language of High Performance Computing and is used to [benchmark the fastest supercomputers in the world](https://top500.org/). |
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computational solid mechanics seems to be missing from this nice summary
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Also electronic structure calculations.
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| My boss gave me 2M lines of old Fortran, what should I do? |
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I'm not convinced that this section title and section content are the best match... having to work with old-styled-large code bases is one thing. A quickstart guide about required software is another thing.
I do see an interest in such a section but it should have approprieate content and references dedicated on "how to navigate old style F77? how to start tackling modernization? etc etc" I think @arjenmarkus has written some interesting content which could be linked.
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It again puts Fortran in a negative light, I would not use this header.
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| If you're writing a program or a library to perform fast arithmetic computation over large numeric arrays, Fortran is the optimal tool for the job. | ||
| Fortran's standardized C interoperability enables seamless integration into multi-language projects, enabling the optimization of performance-critical components. |
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Maybe add links to the section talking about the iso_c_binding module.
| Why Fortran? | ||
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| Despite being thought by many outside the community to be an archaic (or dead) language, Fortran is very much alive. In fact, _because_ it is the oldest programming language in active use, it underpins multi-decadal computational efforts in Earth sciences, material sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. |
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I would not start with "fortran is dead", that puts the reader in a negative "state", that we then need to get him out of. Rather, we want to stay positive.
I would say something like:
| Despite being thought by many outside the community to be an archaic (or dead) language, Fortran is very much alive. In fact, _because_ it is the oldest programming language in active use, it underpins multi-decadal computational efforts in Earth sciences, material sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. | |
| Fortran is the oldest programming language in active use and it underpins multi-decadal computational efforts in Earth sciences, material sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. |
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