Im sorry if there is already a thread about fortran.....


but fuck fortran. so hard. right in the ass. rodman is a terrible "teacher." reading from a word file every single lecture is not teaching.

5/11/2010 10:27:29 AM

lmao.. oh the possibilities of what to say..

5/11/2010 10:32:24 AM

I skipped the lecture every single day and just went to the lab. Fortran is one of the simplest programming languages. If you've never done programming before, you should be able to learn everything by teaching yourself if you have a book or notes from the teacher and just paying attention in lab.

5/11/2010 11:04:37 AM

Class was easy. I got an A-

I'm astraladvent and I approved this message.

5/11/2010 11:05:30 AM

I'm sorry, did you want help with Fortran, or did you just come in here to cry like a little girl?

5/11/2010 12:39:51 PM

i was ready to go on a rant about how engineers really do use fortran and i wish i had taken it instead of java.

oh well, another time perhaps.

[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 1:09 PM. Reason : not that i couldn't go back and learn it myself, but it's easier just to use C ]

5/11/2010 1:08:45 PM

they should drop the fortran requirement for MEs and offer a matlab/maple/EES class instead. those are actually helpful in our course of study

5/11/2010 2:45:08 PM

yea matlab or mathcad stuff can be really useful. Honestly, more engineers need to come out of school being excel gurus with a good base of VB. So much expensive software out there that people use for small calculations that could be done in Excel using VB.

5/11/2010 2:52:35 PM

^^ I agree. Fortran was fucking easy, and so far, useless. Granted, there are actual majors who need Fortran (like NEs).

lion4russell, shut the fuck up. Fortran is easy. You don't even need to go to class. Programming is just giving a computer instructions to do something, in a specific sequence. It's really quite simple for Fortran. It's just like giving instructions to someone on how to do something. Yeah, it's a bit more technical than that, but it's no more difficult than that.

5/11/2010 4:02:27 PM

HAHAHA.

I kept those starcraft servers HOT in that class. By the end of the semester we had 20+ people playing pretty regular during class.

5/11/2010 4:55:54 PM

Shit, even ECE 406 was an easy enough course where you build a fucking processor and then program it too (rest your soul LC3). Simple algorithms shouldn't be hard in any language for any engineering student. Application-level programming is a hell of a feat though. I like C, but Java can make so many things easier, and many times Excel and VB can do a shit load more than you'd need.

If you need help, I'm sure there's something we can do.

5/11/2010 5:14:51 PM

^yea most people really have no idea about half the potential that excel + vb has. And when you build the stuff yourself it just makes it that much easier to verify the output, manipulate it to do things that commercial software couldn't, and impress your clients.

For example, on the project I am on, we have some really thick concrete walls that none of the standard solar heat gain programs accurately cover. From the small programs to the expensive "industry standard" programs, none of them accurately calculated heat loads for these thick walls. Our client and our subcontractors were all trying out these different programs that fell short and trying to build stuff in matlab, but the output looked horrendous. I offered to build something in excel and most of the people were like "go ahead and try but I don't think you can do this kind of iterative calculation that requires data from all these tables in xx standard or xx published data just using excel"

Well I did and not only did it get the same answers as the expensive software, we could accurately calculate up to any desired concrete thickness.

Moral of the story? I think it is important for any engineer to have a fundamental knowledge of programming. I really hadn't used VB before I got to this job but having taught myself QBasic yearsssss ago and also taking C++ and Fortran I had the logic knowledge, just needed to learn the VB syntax which google was more than adequate in providing.

5/11/2010 5:24:58 PM

hey dipshits, i said fuck fortran. not it was hard. i got a b without going to lecture. but that class was gay as fuck and a complete waste of time

5/11/2010 6:30:23 PM

^^ How did you confirm hardware to model correlation?

[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 6:30 PM. Reason : ]

5/11/2010 6:30:32 PM

As far as verifying that the program was calculating correctly I just had to do a few things:

-I took a decent cross section of different types of surfaces, solar orientations, etc. that were covered by industry standard software and compared my results to what was found using those programs

-To verify that it was doing the calculations correctly for concrete walls that were thicker than what was normally covered, I had to do a manual calculation and compare it to what my spreadsheet calculated. This was a complete pain and tedious but it verified my spreadsheet by getting the manual answer using proven and published formulas and comparing it to my spreadsheet with +/- 2% accuracy.

It wasn't a matter of calculating something that there wasn't data to back up, it was just that most commercial and light industrial buildings don't have concrete walls thicker than 1-2ft (usually <12") so the companies doing the software didn't put in that functionality and just built their programs using the data from our industry standards group ASHRAE.

I just dug deeper and actually built my spreadsheet with the equations that ASHRAE used to create those data tables. So instead of using bounded tables, you could essentially have unlimited wall thickness. It was something the companies producing the software should have done in the first place...instead of what should have been an end-user creating a better calculation using Excel and VB (Well, it should be better once I finish it...I got it functional for the project I am on now but I have plans to expand it in the future).

[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 6:44 PM. Reason : ]

5/11/2010 6:42:55 PM

HEY SO NOW THAT THE WINDOW HAS BEEN OPENED:
for engineers who aren't going to use any programming language, then yes fortran is useless, but no more useless than, say, java.

HOWEVER, if you're going to do any engineering programming, fortran is the fucking king. everyone uses fortran! it is completely worth knowing!

5/11/2010 7:04:59 PM

Quote :

"hey dipshits, i said fuck fortran. not it was hard. i got a b without going to lecture. but that class was gay as fuck and a complete waste of time"

HEY DIPSHIT, this isn't "Bitch about classes you didn't like Hall."

5/11/2010 7:09:14 PM

they really need an in depth class on excel and VB, how can we make this happen? I'd settle for matlab, simulink has been pretty helpful. i also think they should move to mathematica instead of maple, but that's just my preference.

seriously though, excel ftw

5/11/2010 11:36:39 PM

Quote :

"hey dipshits, i said fuck fortran. not it was hard. "

lion4russell

Quote :

"fortran. so hard."

lion4russell

5/12/2010 12:45:13 AM

TUFF GUYS ITT.

5/12/2010 2:10:59 AM

5/12/2010 8:40:18 AM

Quote :

"they should drop the fortran requirement for MEs and offer a matlab/maple/EES class instead. those are actually helpful in our course of study"

Do they not have Maple labs for Calc I, II, and III anymore? I took those classes back in 2002-2003 and we had a Maple lab for each one of them. I still use Maple every now and then for solving complex integrals.


As a side note, Fortran is not hard at all. Just pay attention in lab and don't worry about the lecture. When I was in Fortran I played Tetris on my calculator the entire time in lecture and ended up teaching the class for three years. If you have any trouble with it, the lab TA's will be happy to help you. Even if you got a crappy TA, there ARE good ones out there, just go to office hours.

Also, for those of you that think Fortran is useless, that isn't the case. I use it at work all the time. In fact I used it last week to do some rocket science (no joke).

5/12/2010 9:56:17 AM

It's useless for the majority of engineers... They should teach a more available language like Python or Perl.

5/12/2010 10:46:36 AM

most (non computer) engineers don't program at all, so that's not really a point to be made.

5/12/2010 10:49:20 AM

^ my point earlier was that while most engineers don't, a lot could benefit from it. I am a Mechanical Engineer in the engineering construction industry (working on a nuclear project at the moment). Probably not high up on your list of people you would expect to be "programming" but having the programming basics foundation + teaching myself some VB (still a complete novice compared to people who program for a living of course) has proved to be a very valuable tool on several occasions.

5/12/2010 10:58:22 AM

I support the Excel + VB suggestion. I myself have frequently wished I had that skill.

5/12/2010 11:25:13 AM

All of my 200 classes taught me things i will use every day for the rest of my life

I'm AstralAdvent and i approved this message.

5/12/2010 10:37:57 PM

i heard talk of getting rid of fortran and replacing it with Matlab but the VB + Excel suggestion in this thread seems much more practical.

5/13/2010 12:43:05 AM

Quote :

"fuck fortran. so hard. right in the ass."

fuck it hard in the ass.

but that was actually funny amac884

5/13/2010 1:16:22 AM

I suck at programming. I feel your pain.

5/13/2010 1:21:07 AM

it'd be a lot more practical to teach integrals via a reference sheet as well.

or replace half of your classes w/ "how to sit at a desk".

that's not the point.

5/13/2010 7:40:54 AM

neither of those things would be more practical actually

5/14/2010 6:56:13 AM