Why Physicists Still Use Fortran

[XavierAP]

Good read, and totally agree there's no point in trying to 
convince programmers to use a new tool other than their own 
choice. C++ evangelists should read this.

On Monday, 16 October 2017 at 01:36:57 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/15/2017 5:26 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> 1-based array indexing...  I don't know, but I've become so 
>> accustomed
>> to 0-based indexing that I doubt I'll ever be able to get used 
>> to a
>> language with 1-based indexing.  Or whether D will ever be 
>> able to
>> challenge Fortran in this respect. :P
>
> I don't want to even try 1 based. All my learned behaviors with 
> arrays would just produce corrupt code.
>
> It's why I don't dare try driving in England.

We are all stuck with 0-based and I don't think I could easily 
change either or that it would be worth it... But I do think 
1-based would have been superior, if we could go way back in time.

Dennis Ritchie did only two things wrong: placing the * at the 
wrong side in pointer declarations; and making arrays as unsafe, 
raw pointers -- and in consequence providing two redundant ways 
to do one same thing: &arr[2] or arr+2