[dmlorenzetti]

In general, I agree with you. However, modern Fortran also has a strong module system, and some nice looping constructs (like explicitly-labeled loops that let you control "breaking" and "continuing" in nested loops quite easily), that made me like using it for even non-array-oriented programs (for other reasons, I don't use Fortran so much anymore).

The only thing I absolutely hated about Fortran for parsing data files is that, according to the standard, a text file has to end with what amounts to an empty line. Many Fortran environments break this rule intentionally, but occasionally you'll find one that follows the rules. It inevitably bites people who forget that their last line of data must be followed by a newline, or else the line may never get read.

[na85]

Yep, I/O in fortran is kind of a pain. I really like the rest of the language, though.