Fortran Should Be Dead. It’s Winning Instead.
Fortran shouldn’t exist in 2024. It’s older than the microchip, uglier than Python, and clunkier than Rust. Yet it runs our weather forecasts, climate models, and nuclear simulations. The reason isn’t inertia — it’s that Fortran’s restrictive design forces compiler optimizations modern languages can’t achieve. Flexibility is a tax, and the bill comes due at the silicon.