Slides for the FortranCon2020 community talk. Content is licensed under CC-BY. Reveal.js is licensed under MIT.
Presenter: Milan Curcic
Co-authors: Ondrej Certik, Laurence Kedward, Vincent Magnin, Ivan Pribec, Brad Richardson, Jeremie Vandenplas.
Title: Toward a thriving open source Fortran community
Abstract: A thriving community around a programming language is essential for onboarding new users and retaining existing ones. Besides a few discussion boards and mailing lists, Fortran has not had a healthy online community in the modern internet era, like many other programming languages have. Despite the development of the language, its user base has been declining as a result. Many new software projects are being started in languages like C++, Python, or Julia, despite Fortran being better suited for the task at hand. In this talk, we will discuss the need for and the ongoing development of the new fortran-lang (https://fortran-lang.org) community and its suite of projects that currently include a standard library, package manager, and a website. Fortran-lang aims to provide a central place for Fortran users, beginning and expert alike, to find recommended tools, libraries, tutorials, and discussion venues that are inclusive and welcoming of newcomers. We believe that an organized community and a home of Fortran on the internet, in addition to the Standards Committee and compiler developers, are essential for the long-term thriving—and not just mere survival—of Fortran. Finally, we will discuss the next steps, the one-year vision, and the 10-year vision for going forward.