Mr. Brainerd presented a talk on Modern Fortran, which assures us that Fortran is still alive and well. He began his presentation by presenting information on the history of Fortran. He took us back to development of Fortran in 1957 by IBM and discussed the different releases including 66, 77, 90 and 95.

He discussed the features in Fortran 90 and 95 that has overcome the short comings that was drawing programmers to other languages. These features now allow programmers in science, engineering, and mathematics to write efficient, maintainable programs.

One feature of Fortran 95 that is both good and bad is the upward compatibility with Fortran 77. The good part is that it allows users to convert previous executing code with little or no modifications. This can be a time cost saver for many users. The bad part is that it retains many redundant and error-prone features from the past.

The solution to the excess baggage problem with Fortran 90 and 95 is F, which is a subset of Fortran 90. F restricts the usage of the bad features. When compared to other language F can boast that it has:

• No semicolons
• No &s
• No *s
• No dangling "else" statements
• No goto's

And the list goes on. F is sometimes called the Java of high performance computing.