Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Are FORTRAN developers worthless now?

FOrmula TRANslation a.k.a FORTRAN was the first scientific language that became popular during the 70's & 80's. I am one of those old school boys learnt FORTRAN in 80's and had good working projects until the INTERNET Boom period. The so-called JAVA technologies did dominate the IT world since then. These days I hardly see anyone asking for FORTRAN professionals. Even when they ask they expect them to be experienced in newer technologies too. I did come across some ads where they ask for VB/ASP/JAVA skilled people who can read/understand FORTRAN. I feel so ridiculous when I see those type of job ads. I keep asking myself how can a ASP/VB/JAVA person know the difference between two modules one starting with "IMPLICIT NONE" and other directly. Looks like its assumed that people with ASP/VB/JAVA skills can find the difference very easily, unfortunately they feel so uncomfortable when a FORTRAN guy with JAVA exposure applies for a JAVA developer position.

Sometimes, I question myself aren't these FORTRAN developers who worked for years writing scientific code not capable to work on these newer technologies.

If you look at the JAVA Code, most of them are nothing but built-in routines and the newer editors provide with so much of help as soon as the first character is typed.

Just wondering it there are any FORTRAN developers who had some bitter experiences when dealing with these newer technology professionals.