Fortran. At least it was comprehensible to a human brain once upon a time. And probably efficiently written.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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If you're good at assembly you'll be fine once you get past the bad formatting, short names, etc. that was common at that time.
I deal with a code base written in the 90s in a language similar to basic. All the 3 letter variable names drive me crazy
Get a grammar aware formatter and variable renamer, if only to help you understand the code.
Yup for the more complex programs renaming is essential
Yeah really. It would be some tough sledding at first, but it would be far better than looking at some code with some nicely named methods and variables with lots of comments (with emoticons!) for days... only to find out it does absolutely nothing.
Wow you’re right! Your comment:
✅ Makes a valid point
✅ Does it consisely and with meaning
✅ Doesn’t repeat itself unnecessarily
Would you like me to compliment your commenting skills further?
Keep doing it, but add some power verbs and enhance the enthusiasm.
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On the other hand, you know the Fortran works and you can break it.
The vibe code is already broken.
I'm still pounding the Fortran button as hard as I can.
The Fortran is tight, works, and has 50 years of field testing.
Much rather work on something old and proven than new and slapdash.
Watfor and Watfiv for the win, baby!
Honourable mention to PL/1 and cobol...
Fortran, all day every day. Because every byte of the 1969 code is there for a reason.
Maybe RAM prices will bring that mindset back.
I almost hope so. But with the speed of M.2 and other formats, I wonder how much is going to end up being swap space use.
Code that has lasted, with some maintenance, for 50+ years vs code that doesn't work from day 1? What advances we have made!
The science of failure!
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1969 code all day erryday. Fuck yeah punch cards
the fortran code was probably written by someone who knew what they were doing and didn't need 1 gb of libraries to implement the save button.
and the fact that the code survived till today does say something about its quality. i don't think this is hard choice.
That's not a given. A friend of mine worked on a weather forecast implemented in Fortran by people who were better at meteorology than programming, and some functions had thousands of parameters. The parameters for one of the calls (not the function definition) were actually supplied in a separate include file.
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Never used Fortran before. So easy choice: Fortran code from 1969
Fortran. Not even close to being a question.
Seriously, especially if it already compiles.
Implicit None gang rise up!
I would genuinely love to find a job coding FORTRAN, mainly because it means I'd almost certainly be doing some kind of scientific computing. Way better than most tech jobs that involve boring CRUD work you don't care about at best, or actively making the world worse implementing the whims of some billionaire sociopath at worst.
Also, the code base will likely be pretty small. If something's made to be delivered on punch cards and run on devices that measure their memory in KB or maybe MB, it's not going to be a ton of code. Even if it's pure assembly, it's going to be easier than a huge automatically generated codebase.
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This. I love scientific computing and would honestly love working in the field.
It’s weird that “legacy code” is a pejorative.
If your code has lasted long enough to be considered “old”, but is still so useful that it can’t just be deleted without a dedicated replacement effort… it’s doing something right.
it’s doing something right
That's where the problem lies, we know it's doing something right but we don't understand what or how it works, we're too reliant on it to change it, and the workarounds we have to make to accommodate it are a pain in the arse.
I work with a different kind of legacy system. It was retrofitted to work with SOAP, OOP, and some other modern stuff, but none of the old farts bothered to learn it. When I inherited a SOAP service that system used, I had to learn a lot about it to get what I needed.
And honestly? It's been a lot of fun. It's a unique kind of challenge, I've practically gained celebrity status at work, and even if it's nothing I'll be doing long-term it shows how I can pick up weird systems and work with others to make some miracles happen.
Instead of "legacy code" they should call it "veteran code", because it has seen some shit.
Brb updating my personal lexicon
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Coming soon:
Fortran code from 1969 that has been vibe coded since.
Well, I don’t know Fortran 66. So, obviously step one is having an LLM convert it to Python for me. /s
Fortran. always Fortran.
because there's always more documentation than with vibecode.
Well obviously with vibe coded stuff, you just put the code back in the AI and ask for documentation.
Problem solved. /s
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I like Fortran very much, but don't get me wrong: maintaining Fortran code from 69 must be a huge pain in the ass. It is certainly code written by researchers who have no idea about programming practices. It is sure full of exceptions everywhere, all variables are 2 characters long. The codebase grew over the years and is now several millions lines of code, most of which is the same functionality copied everywhere with slight changes. You have no idea what each subroutine is supposed to do, and it doesn't help that most algorithms used in there were never published or documented.
I think I'll go with the vibe coding for this one.
Fortran IV (and anything before Fortran 77) is a pain in the ass.
But I’d take it any day before code allucinated by a shitty token predictor.
Fortran 😍
Uhh... after 20 years of dev work... Fortran by a mile
Fortran 66 isn't too bad. You have to write everything yourself but if you're just maintaining it is normally fine. Gotos get annoying, though!
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Isn't it more COBOL than FORTRAN in terms of getting paid?
I thought FORTRAN was pretty much exclusively used via SciPy in research & academia these days.
COBOL is still powering the world economy on mainframes
Coming from research: no, Fortran is very much alive as is. Plenty software is still actively developed in Fortran, I do believe in recent years there's been a push towards C++, but I'm unsure how much that progressed.
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Around 2004 I had just recently graduated a shitty tech school as a DBA. Soon after I got a job via my father for one of his college buddies. My job was to convert old cobbled together FoxPro into something relatively modern. I was also hired simultaneously to the same company as a Java web developer and had to combine the two. I spent 2 hellish years there and haven't touched code since, which sucks because I used to really love programming.
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I'll be the person to answer vibe code.
- I'd rather rewrite either from scratch,
- nobody will blame me for throwing it out, and
- it's presumably in a language I can learn more easily, or already know.
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Fortran -- because helping any of the idiot CxOs who embraced vibe coding will only reward them and delay popping the bubble. Let 'em hang by their greed.
I hope any dev who's asked to come back and fix vibe-coding demands 3x their previous wage, double the vacation and stock options.
Plus, when the bubble pops and you're the only human to touch it, they're not gonna blame the ai that shat it out.
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Meme failure!
Fortran
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