FORTRAN is still being used to write CFD codes for a number of reasons, including:
While FORTRAN is a powerful language for writing CFD codes, it is also a relatively old language. It can be more difficult to learn and use than newer languages, such as Python and C++. However, for many CFD researchers and practitioners, the performance, maturity, portability, and libraries available for FORTRAN make it the best choice for writing CFD codes.
probably because of native support for multidimensional arrays. in my opinion mostly because it's used by older researchers
Rubish! It is because is a very easy language to learn. My students never took more than 2 days to write correctly complex computer programa, including a entirely new CFD FORTRAN computer program for flow calcularion in axial flow compressors…I myself, decades ago, when introduced to computer language, heard: you are being introduced to a dead language, as latin,…
a developper writing a software or library in a some programing language will keep using the same language for maintaining that code beause rewriting in new language will add cost but wont add speed.
in contrast writing new code in new language will ease it's maintenance, have access to newer libraries ...
by the way i think FEniCS is a c++ llibrary acording to wikipedia and github.
using a language will be driven by it's ease of use and performance:
- 1D PDE (1d transport), small domain, simple mesh ==> python, matlab, julia
- 3D , large domain (CFD) ==> Fortran, c, c++, Rust (rust is less used but it has a growing community and the benifit that when used correctly if your code compiles it will work without any memory leak)
- Support of language by your hardware (CPU, GPU)
For very large and long developed CFD codes the matter is not only writing the code, maintaining it, its performance and parallel scalability.
The major and extremely time- and resource-consuming issue is the validation of the code for its industrial application. If one would decide to rewrite a 20 years long developed CFD code in a different programming language, then the benefit in terms of return of investment would probably rather marginal. And it came for the cost, that all previous code verification and validation needs to be done again from scratch. That is something, which is most of the time underestimated by young researchers just writing their own university code alone and in an isolated manner as a PhD exercise. For them for obvious reasons the usage of such an old programming language like Fortran seems rediculous and no longer justified. But this assessment leads to an entirely different result, if you look on that question from the perspective of a commercial CFD code with an already spent work effort of thousands of men-years in it.
Regards,
Dr. Th. Frank.
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