Where are the Fortran communities and enthusiasts?

[kytrinyx]

As we move towards the launch of the new version of Exercism we are going to be ramping up on actively recruiting people to help provide feedback.

Our goal is to get to 100%: everyone who submits a solution and wants feedback should get feedback. Good feedback. You can read more about this aspect of the new site here: http://mentoring.exercism.io/

To do this, we're going to need a lot more information about where we can find language enthusiasts.

• Is Fortran supported by one or more large organizations?
• Does Fortran have an official community manager?
• Do you know of specific communities (online or offline) that are enthusiastic about Fortran? (Chat communities, forums, meetups, student clubs, etc)
• Are there popular conferences for Fortran? (If so, what are some examples?)
• Are there any organizations who are targeted specifically at getting certain subgroups or demographics interested in Fortran? (e.g. kids, teenagers, career changers, people belonging to various groups that are typically underrepresented in tech?)
• Are there specific groups or programs dedicated to mentoring people in Fortran?
• Are there popular newsletters for Fortran?
• Is Fortran taught at programming bootcamps? (If so, what are some examples?)
• Is Fortran taught at universities? (If so, what are some examples?)

In other words: where do people care a lot and/or know a lot about Fortran?

This is part of the project being tracked in exercism/meta#103

[SolidTux]

I don't know the answer to all your questions, but to some of them.

Is Fortran supported by one or more large organizations?

What do you mean by "supported"? It is definitely used especially for simulation code. Or do you mean like Rust is Mozillas project?

Does Fortran have an official community manager?

I don't think so, there's no central organisation which does this.

Do you know of specific communities (online or offline) that are enthusiastic about Fortran? (Chat communities, forums, meetups, student clubs, etc)

There is a Fortran subreddit.

Is Fortran taught at universities? (If so, what are some examples?)

Yes, I know that in meteorology there are usually Fortran courses as Fortran is used for weather and climate models.

[kytrinyx]

Thanks for the information!

What do you mean by "supported"?

Languages are often supported in different ways, I'm curious about all of them. I mean more than that the language is used by companies, though.

• Some companies hire developers to work on the language or tooling full time
• Some companies have teams working on resources beyond language/tooling
• Some companies have a community management team
• Sometimes when a language is run by a small independent team, they might sponsor with money

And there are probably other ways to support the language as well.

[kyrsjo]

You may be interested in the standards committee: https://wg5-fortran.org/

[kytrinyx]

the standards committee

Very cool, thank you!

[anjohan]

The usenet newsgroup (yes, this confirms another old-fashioned-fortranners-prejudice) comp.lang.fortran seems very active, with many experts contributing.

[jeffhammond]

Is Fortran supported by one or more large organizations?

Intel, IBM, Cray, PGI (NVIDIA), and other vendors have a Fortran compiler product. See http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Fortran+2008+status for unofficial details.

Does Fortran have an official community manager?

Fortran is an ISO language. https://wg5-fortran.org/ is the organization responsible for curating the language definition.

Do you know of specific communities (online or offline) that are enthusiastic about Fortran?

It's not possible to provide anything resembling an inclusive list.

Thousands of scientific programmers are enthusiastic about Fortran. Fortran is heavily used by chemists, physicists, and engineers.

Is Fortran taught at universities? (If so, what are some examples?)

• https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/is-skills/catalogue/program-op-sys-catalogue/fortran-intro
• http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/nmm1/Fortran/index.html
• https://www.atmos.illinois.edu/courses/atmos502-sp2017/Fortran-language.html
• https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/education/academic-courses ("Introduction to Scientific Programming")

[kytrinyx]

Thanks, this is great information!

[kytrinyx]

Thank you! I've got what I need for now, I'm going to close this out. 🌸