Customer Reviews

Introduction to Programming with Fortran: with coverage of Fortran 90, 95, 2003 and 77

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book does not assume any prior knowledge and provides a good intro to Fortran programming (also provides a short intro to programming in general). Goes over the essential elements needed to get started with Fortran and provides many examples. In fact, most of the concepts are demonstrated using actual coding examples. One drawback is that the index in this book is not extensive, so it does not serve quite as well as a reference. However, it still does a decent job in this department. After reading through this book I felt well-prepared to begin programming in Fortran. A nice complement to getting this book is to download one of the freely available Fortran documentation manuals (e.g. from Intel) to serve as a reference guide.

No previous coding experience in Fortran is assumed by the authors. Actually, no previous programming in any language. Fortran is quite easy to learn, compared to others like C++ or Java or C#. The book explains the differences between the 4 major recent versions of Fortran. Though some of you might quibble as to why the book even talks about Fortran 77. That originated in 1977!

But the sheer mass of legacy code means that a lot still exists in F77. This market reality also has job implications. Some Fortran jobs will necessitate you being restricted to F77. Or F90. Hence the book's support for these. At least it does not talk about F66!

Definitively, an excellent book that I enthusiastically recommend. I've been programming in Fortran (mainly 77) some years ago, so I needed to recycle not only my knowledge about the language but also my way of focussing tasks susceptible of being programmed. This book fully fulfilled my expectations.

This book provides good coverage of Fortran 90 and 95 but the only Fortran 2003 discussion is four pages that list the features. Since I don't think listing the features constitutes "Coverage", I have given this book a low rating. I would have given it the lowest rating but the coverage of Fortran 90 and 95 is very helpful to me. I wish the authors had not misrepresented the content in the book's title.

I was deeply disappointed with this book. I bought it really just to review Fortran and learn the features of Fortran 95 since I hadn't used Fortran since the early 90's, and '95 is practically a new language. It's not a terrible book. Just understand that the "Introduction" part of the title can't be emphasized enough. It might be fine for someone who has never learned programming in -any- language, but professional programmers fluent in at least one other language should not even consider it. Huge swaths of the book are wasted on excruciatingly banal explanations (which aren't even that good). The history part in the beginning is nice...except that it's a considerable chunk of the book and that's not what I was paying for. Other huge swaths are just space-filling code listings. And the whole thing has a "written on contract" feel...like Springer just committed to publishing something on Fortran and roped some academics into assembling some text. Again, if you're a complete beginner at programming (and not just Fortran) it might be OK. If you're anything else, forget it. I've never written a negative review before now, and never thought I'd have anything negative to say of a Springer book, but this was a huge disappointment.

I got this book because my professor recommended it. I agree with him. I love this book. It starts with some history and basic stuff about computer and programming, which gives me some background knowledge. Then it explains programming in detail using examples. That makes me understand how to program. In addition, these examples are easy to follow and not trivial.

It seems to be well-liked by those who like it, but I really don't like it. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think it's not the most appropriate book for me.

I'm a statistician who needs to write programs in Fortran for Bayesian computations; I know enough about programming to be dangerous, but also enough to know that I'm not a programmer; I've written lots of lousy code in C and Java before swearing off them years ago; I'd rather program in Perl, S or bash.

It seems hard to find good examples (for instance, how do I write a function that returns an array?). The appendix listing intrinsic functions is frequently hard to understand and atrociously designed and formatted.

I expect if you read it cover-to-cover, you'd have a good understanding of, e.g., how exactly interfaces work, but it's hard to just jump in and find this information.