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Tapping into the open-source software movement, in which anyone can see and modify the underlying code for software, is a natural way to try to ensnare new programmers--in particular, programmers in high-performance computing where open-source software is popular, a do-it-yourself ethos is encouraged and people are willing to experiment with new technology to extract the most work from their hardware.
New languages that have shown some successes in recent years--PHP, Python, Perl and Mono, for example--have open-source underpinnings. And after years of resisting, Sun is making Java open-source software.
It's too strong to say Fortress would be doomed if it weren't open-source, "but its future would be extremely niche," O'Grady said.
Sun released the Fortress interpreter under the permissive open-source BSD license. The company is keeping control over the official version, though, so for now at least outside programmers will need to give Sun control over their contributions, Allen said.
It's also important to have a community interested in a new language to get it to catch on, O'Grady said. For Sun, that community is high-performance computing.
For example, programmers can use ordinary mathematical expressions rather than having to translate formulas into the typically very different syntax of computer languages. "It provides more productivity because it allows the scientific programmer to stay closer to his own problem domain instead of learning some computer science language," Allen said.
Still a prototype
Fortress is good for other tasks, too, Allen believes. For example, it's perfectly appropriate for somebody writing business software for customer-relationship management, he said.
But not just yet.
Sun released an alpha version of the Fortress language specification in September, but it's not final, Allen said. And the interpreter is in its early stages. The interpreter can handle some Fortress features--for example, "work stealing" in which one hardware element that's finished up its task can pick up chores from another that's still busy--but it still only runs a subset of the Fortress language.
The interpreter runs on a Java foundation, but shouldn't be confused with Java itself. Java lets the same program run on a multitude of computers, so it means the Fortress project can be developed more widely.
Ultimately, Sun wants to build not just an interpreter, which executes Fortress software line by line, but also a compiler, which translates the software in advance into a form a computer can understand from the code a person wrote. Compiled software is generally faster than interpreted software. In addition, Sun envisions an optimizing compiler, a technology that adjusts the compiled version of software as it runs to improve performance.
Sun has started with a clean slate with Fortress. That means new programmers have more to learn, but also that Sun has more options for development. But Allen has respect for Fortran's inertia.
"There are a lot of features in Fortran that make it difficult for programmers to write as efficiently as they can in modern programming languages," he said, but added, "It's hard to imagine a world in which Fortran programs are no longer run at all."
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