First official release of LLVM Flang

by seekdeepon 3/12/2025, 6:37 AMwith 26 comments

by dengon 3/12/2025, 11:00 AM

Congratulations to the team, this has been a long time coming. I still think that modern Fortran is actually a great language to write numerical code, especially when doing lots of linear algebra. Granted, it was many years ago, but I still remember struggling with C++ and libraries like Eigen, and one day, confronted yet again with agonizing slow compile times and error messages that look like binary, I ditched C++ for good and moved to Fortran95. Not only could I pretty much copy&paste a lot of stuff from my Matlab prototype, the resulting binary was actually faster than C++ with Eigen.

Not sure if I would use it today for new projects, probably Julia would be the better choice nowadays.

by pandemic_regionon 3/12/2025, 9:07 AM

> Whilst many alternative programming languages have come and gone, it [Fortran] has regained its popularity for writing high performance codes.

I don't understand why sometimes people pluralize "code". It sounds a bit silly but maybe it's just me.

by jmclnxon 3/12/2025, 2:09 PM

Congratulations, next is COBOL ? I am serious, we really need a free COBOL compiler.

Yes, GNU now has a front end for COBOL, so LLVM turn. Maybe IBM and the Navy Department will help.

by aragilaron 3/12/2025, 7:52 AM

There doesn't appear to be a link to the release notes, it would be nice to know what are the current limitations.

by wiz21con 3/12/2025, 9:30 AM

How compatible is it with the current code bases developped under proprietary compilers ?

by HexDecOctBinon 3/12/2025, 8:11 AM

Now someone go convince the C committee to stop trying to turn C into Fortran.