It's such an odd little subcultural quirk that Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes". Most software folks refer to "code", as if it was a substance like sand or water, and use other words for specific units of "code" (programs, libraries, modules).
>Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes".
I think it's a European engineering thing that just sort of caught on, actually. For example when I was in undergrad, my 4th-year computational fluids prof made us use "Code Aster"[0] and "Code Saturne"[1] which are both made by a French lab, I believe. Most of the usage of "code as a countable noun" that I've encountered has origins in English-as-a-second-language projects.
The uncountable aspect of many English words is highly unintuitive to many of us.
Information. Code. Software.
Hardware.
I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable.
I suppose for software we should just use programs or applications. But that's slightly more specific than software!
In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.
Why the hell do I need to cut information into pieces to count it?
Both English and French are cursed languages, but English loses on this one.
And then there's the trousers. And now you need to say "a pair of" to talk about one unit of them. Though to be completely fair we have that for the glasses (lunettes) and the scissors as well.
I've always had a soft spot for Fortran, even though I rarely use it any more.
When I was in undergrad, so sometime around 2006 or so, I read somewhere that Fortran was actually faster than C in some cases, due I believe to the compiler and certain choices it makes regarding aliasing arrays and whatnot.
I am an aerospace engineer and avid flight simmer, mostly WWII combat sims, and a huge part of the hobby involves arguing with other people about WWII piston aircraft and their performance. Pages upon pages of forum threads replete with PDFs of historical documents in German, Russian, etc. In order to win arguments more effectively, I decided to write a parametric "flight sim" that would accept a set of maneuvers as an input (e.g. "start at 10000m, dive until speed reaches X km/h indicated, zoom climb back up" or "turn in a circle at Y km/h indicated") so that I had something to compare the in-game results and historical data with.
I decided to write the whole thing in Fortran 2003 (the 2008 revision was still a draft, as I recall), because fast.
I bought a copy of Stanley Hooker's book "The Performance of a Supercharged Aero Engine" from the Rolls-Royce heritage press, implemented the method therein. Implemented a numerical vortex panel method for the lifting surfaces, the whole shebang. It was actually a really fun project and it worked pretty well. Fortran is a neat, quaint language and I look back on that project fondly but ultimately I don't miss Fortran. The syntax is needlessly verbose. I/O is a chore. String manipulation is a pain. If you ask me, C++ (despite its many flaws) is superior in every way.
I am curious to know why there are two Fortrans (i.e. LFortran and LLVM Flang) both targeting the LLVM backend?
It's such an odd little subcultural quirk that Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes". Most software folks refer to "code", as if it was a substance like sand or water, and use other words for specific units of "code" (programs, libraries, modules).
I guess when you’ve been calling it that before everyone else you’re allowed. Sort of how Common Lisp calls threads ‘processes’.
As does Smalltalk and Erlang, and to make things more interesting, all three mean something not exactly the same.
>Fortran (really HPC) people call programs and libraries "codes".
I think it's a European engineering thing that just sort of caught on, actually. For example when I was in undergrad, my 4th-year computational fluids prof made us use "Code Aster"[0] and "Code Saturne"[1] which are both made by a French lab, I believe. Most of the usage of "code as a countable noun" that I've encountered has origins in English-as-a-second-language projects.
[0] https://code-aster.org/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Saturne
The uncountable aspect of many English words is highly unintuitive to many of us.
Information. Code. Software. Hardware.
I suspect many people don't even know they are uncountable.
I suppose for software we should just use programs or applications. But that's slightly more specific than software!
In French we can have both: le logiciel as some uncountable mass, or un/des/N logiciels if you need to count them.
Why the hell do I need to cut information into pieces to count it?
Both English and French are cursed languages, but English loses on this one.
And then there's the trousers. And now you need to say "a pair of" to talk about one unit of them. Though to be completely fair we have that for the glasses (lunettes) and the scissors as well.
in the ngspice user manual, they call circuit descriptions an "input deck"
https://ngspice.sourceforge.io/docs/ngspice-manual.pdf
I've always had a soft spot for Fortran, even though I rarely use it any more.
When I was in undergrad, so sometime around 2006 or so, I read somewhere that Fortran was actually faster than C in some cases, due I believe to the compiler and certain choices it makes regarding aliasing arrays and whatnot.
I am an aerospace engineer and avid flight simmer, mostly WWII combat sims, and a huge part of the hobby involves arguing with other people about WWII piston aircraft and their performance. Pages upon pages of forum threads replete with PDFs of historical documents in German, Russian, etc. In order to win arguments more effectively, I decided to write a parametric "flight sim" that would accept a set of maneuvers as an input (e.g. "start at 10000m, dive until speed reaches X km/h indicated, zoom climb back up" or "turn in a circle at Y km/h indicated") so that I had something to compare the in-game results and historical data with.
I decided to write the whole thing in Fortran 2003 (the 2008 revision was still a draft, as I recall), because fast.
I bought a copy of Stanley Hooker's book "The Performance of a Supercharged Aero Engine" from the Rolls-Royce heritage press, implemented the method therein. Implemented a numerical vortex panel method for the lifting surfaces, the whole shebang. It was actually a really fun project and it worked pretty well. Fortran is a neat, quaint language and I look back on that project fondly but ultimately I don't miss Fortran. The syntax is needlessly verbose. I/O is a chore. String manipulation is a pain. If you ask me, C++ (despite its many flaws) is superior in every way.