The Tsoding channel has a good introductory video showing what trying out Fortran feels like:

"Learning Fortran in 2023" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvUQndB8R9s

Modern Fortran is quite quite different from those punched cards back in the day, the latest revision being from 2023.

Coupled with a notebook like experience, one gets Python like experience, coupled with one of the HPC performance kings, and that is what LFortran is trying to achieve.

https://lfortran.org/

FORTRAN = FORmula TRANslation. I learned it in 1987 as WATFIV on an IBM Mainframe running DOS/VSE.

It gave way to BASIC, and last I knew in 2000 we were using Visual BASIC.

OpenWatcom FORTRAN 77 is here: https://openwatcom.org/ftp/install/

GNUFORTRAN is here: https://gcc.gnu.org/fortran/

GNUFORTRAN is part of GCC: https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran

I saw labs that were converting their tools over to python start giving up for re-embracing fortran again a decade ago. Definitely expected this and not surprised by it.

I'm not sure how TIOBE works, but I wonder how much of the rise can be attributed to old Fortran projects getting thrown up on GitHub. Fortran is a fine language, and it has its strengths, but I don't think "native computation" is one of them. This kind of thing is rarely the deciding factor...

Is it easy to install and configure Fortnan? Is there proper IDE support now?