Best way to program in Windows

Pros: Built in GUI builder, scientific graphics, bitmap handling and OpenGL if you want fast and powerful Windows programming. I use all that all the time. Most rigorous error checking among all Fortran compilers based on Polyhedron tests. And with /undef and /full_debug finds the most hidden errors you suspected but couldn't find in your code for 20 years :-). Great at making fun at colleagues by finding unbelievable amount of errors, mostly small, but sometimes really serious, in their codes if they use different compilers. With multithreading it is ready for multicore processors. Capable of .NET and has own C++ where you can do such tricks as mixing Fortran and C in the same code. Is most compatible with all older Fortran77 codes. Champion in compilation speed, an order faster at least. Helpful community on the web. My preferred one.

Cons: Mentioned above crazy amount of features and debugging capabilities came at a price that it builds not the fastest executables, but your mileage may vary. When you build larger and larger codes though you realize that being 10% or even 30% faster is not the most important factor. From my fox hole, my development and debugging time is #1. In some cases I also use Intel Fortran, which in average creates faster executables, but does not have all mentioned benefits, for potential squeezing of last drops of performance, though, again, probably this is not worth of time - each new upgrade to new fastest processor gives me exponentially more juice compared to optimization which is just linear factor. YMMV but not very much.

Posted: 26-Jul-2008 11:53:55 AM