<p>I plan on going into grad school for an AE-related area. Is learning fortran still useful? It seems that way.
There aren't any courses any my school that teaches fortran anymore, but I can learn it by myself (i'm more of a self learner anyways). Which book do you guys recommend?</p>
<p>It is still useful in certain instances. A lot of legacy codes are written in fortran and a lot of new stuff still is because the guys who wrote the legacy stuff are still around.</p>
<p>No, it is outdated and learning it won’t help you. Try Python(if you don’t know it) which is super easy to learn and more useful.</p>
<p>Fortran is certainly useful (for now). Much of the console-based simulation programs used for analysis work are written in Fortran 77/90. Many of these programs are being overhauled, and re-written in C/C++, but it will be years (maybe even decades) until that is all said and done. </p>
<p>Having said that, whether or not you will need to know Fortran yourself is hard to say. It depends on the type of work you will be doing. Generally speaking, if any major code fixes are needed with an existing fortran program, they will hand the job over to a software group that knows what they’re doing… however, you might be in a situation where you need to make a small tweak or two to the code in order to make it work for your particular application.</p>
<p>In graduate school, which is relevant to the OP, there won’t be a dedicated software group. You will have a piece of software in whatever language (sometimes fortran) and you will be the one tweaking or updating it. I suppose you could rewrite it in something like C++, and some do, but that usually isn’t worth it I the code is already moderately complex.</p>
<p>Unless you know you’re going to need it, don’t bother. I learned Fortran in college in 1981, and have never used it since. That includes six years working aerospace.</p>