Fortran, GSoC21 and Me
I know not what the language of the future will look like, but I know it will be called FORTRAN… — Charles Anthony Richard Hoare, circa 1982 – Daan Frenkel, 2020
This post is a little belated, given that the GSoC announcements were a few days ago. Therein lies the future, and much digital ink, sweat and blood shall be spilled towards accomplishing the goals outlined in my accepted project proposal. However, interestingly, it was an offhand comment at a CECAM MARVEL Classics webinar on free energy of solids 1 which triggered this.
Formula translation, or FORTRAN was not my first programming language. I grew up with the Logo turtle, and progressed naturally into C for coursework (as was the tradition back during my schooldays) and C++ for monkeying around with my Xperia devices (mostly Cyanogenmod stuff, some LineageOS). I shifted rather awkwardly in and out of Java (also a popular mainstay in different schools) and decided at some point during high school to pick up a high level language. I choose Ruby, because it was cuter than Python (still is!) and I had just been bitten by the web-design bug (Jekyll!!! Ruby on Rails!).
I was not unaware of Fortran, but I had little to no inclination to learn it, at the time, in my youth I was only interested in systems programming, web-design and other practical, visual activities.
