Re: Blog: Is Fortran better than Python for teaching the basics of numerical linear algebra?

On Sun, 6 Sep 2026 15:32:53 -0000 (UTC), Thomas Koenig wrote:

> Fortran 77 makes little sense, modern Fortran variants (Fortran 90+)
> are available with free compilers and offer much more comfort and
> safety.

Python offers custom operator overloads, so you can write actual
operator expressions for addition, dot product etc -- closer in
appearance to the actual maths -- instead of parenthesis-ridden
function calls.

For a simple example, this method constructs a 3D homogeneous matrix
that performs arbitrary scaling about an arbitrary centre point:

    @classmethod
    def scaling_about(celf, factor : Vector4, centre : Vector4) :
        "constructs a Matrix4 that scales by the specified offset Vector4" \
        " about the specified centre."
        return \
          (
                celf.translation(centre)
            @
                celf.scaling(factor)
            @
                celf.translation(- centre)
          )
    #end scaling_about

From the body, you can see intuitively how it works, as the dot
product (“@” being the recommended Python operator to use for this) of
3 separate transformations: from right to left, you move the centre
point to the origin, perform the scaling about the origin, then
translate the origin back to the original centre point.