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(Please don't lob rocks at me. I love Python.)
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this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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the main thing that makes fortran preferable to C is the way it handles arrays and vectors. due to different pointer semantics, they can be laid out more efficiently in memory, meaning less operations need to be done for a given calculation.
Interesting. Is this a fundamental limitation of C or is it just more preferable and easier to use FORTRAN when implementing it?
Meaning could the same performance be achieved in C but most optimized libraries are already written so why bother? Or basically C can't achieve the memory optimization at all?
you can get the same performance by using the
restrictkeyword in C.basically, C allows pointer aliasing while fortran does not, which means C programs need to be able to handle cases when a value is accessed from multiple locations. fortran does not, so a lot of accesses can be optimized into immediates, or unrolled without guards.
restrictis a pinky-promise to the compiler that no overlapping takes place, e.g. that a value will only be accessed from one place. it's basically rust ownership semantics without enforcement.