Fortran 90/95 Explained

This is the complete opposite of those thick expensive computer books full of endless examples that take chapters to get as far as "hello world". You're an experienced programmer in other languages and you have a big chunk of Fortran 90/95 to get to grips with. You just want to get on with it, quickly.

The authors were probably hoping to produce something like Kernighan and Ritchie's concise guide to the C language. This book is about as close as I can find for Fortran 90/95 but it severely lacks the elegance and readability that make K&R an all time classic. I don't understand the structure of this one at all - it's a bit of a mess. But it's short enough to flick through, and the index works most of the time... unless you're looking for symbols: the publishers have decided that since "&&" is not a word, it doesn't merit space in the index, so rather traditionally they start with the "A"s.

Can be useful as a reference (1/1 people found this helpful)

This book is very concise but has little structre. It is not very useful as a tutorial. It does have a lot of information in it, or rather "all over it" which you can find using the index, which is good. It's main advantages are it's comfortable size and the fact that a lot of the information from it is also available online.It's a nice book to have if you already know Fortran, but I find clearer explenations, examples and advice in S. Chapman's book.

Always the first Fortran 90 book I pick up. (17/17 people found this helpful)

In my opinion this book gives a thorough, yet concise account of the Fortran 90 programming language and its more recent Fortran 95 revision. Its virtue lies in its unambiguous definition of terms, programming constructs, function definitions etc. It is ideal for the experienced programmer who wants to know how to code a specific task in Fortran 90. It is most definitely not suitable, nor aimed at either the novice programmer or the programmer of the Fortran 66 era; both of whom need a slower, more example and algorithm driven, introduction to the Fortran of the 90's.

I have successfully used this book for teaching, but only to experienced Fortran 77 programmers eager to learn about the new language, and with the aid of highly structured lectures and supervised computer tutorial sessions. I would not recommend it for student self study.

As an experienced programmer, what I most like about this book is that I can look up a term in the index, be referred to a small number of entries in the text, and rest assured that in those few pages I have all the information I require on that topic. Other Fortran books I have read frequently do not document, or pay scant regard to, important features of the language such as optional arguments to I/O statements or generic function disambiguation.

If I were only allowed to keep just one Fortran 90 text book this would be the one.

Michael Metcalf, John K. Reid

Reader Reviews:

For experienced programmers in a hurry (1/1 people found this helpful)

Can be useful as a reference (1/1 people found this helpful)

Always the first Fortran 90 book I pick up. (17/17 people found this helpful)

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