[TriLUG] Broad question

[John Vaughters via TriLUG]

" I can tell you that nobody wants to rewrite
extensive amounts of code (and re-test it) unless they absolutely have
to... especially given that the day to day work of ongoing bug fixes and
software enhancements doesn't let up just because someone thinks you need
to change your code to be compatible with the new way of doing things.
That's impractical, and why people resist it so much."

Scientists still use FORTRAN as their go to language for a variety of reasons, but one big reason is as William Sutton stated above. Waaaaaaaay too much work goes into reinventing the wheel. Who has time for that? Something that has little re-engineering and remains functional for decades and easy to read with little changes makes libraries that solved complex problems a piece of gold for them.

For this discussion I am not recommending learning FORTRAN. Just making a point about maintainability and usefulness. 

I'm a python fan for sure. Hard to beat the work already done for you by so many others that is freely available. 

John Vaughters