My main issue with the author’s objections to the code is that he maintains FORTRAN is “obsolete”. In many ways, those older languages are less prone to bugs in the hands of a skilled programmer than some of the newer ones, as less is happening behind the curtain.
FORTRAN is not a dominant language anymore, and neither is COBOL, and neither are obsolete, performing the same functions as before.
The language isn’t the issue. If there are errors, there are errors. If the program is poorly written, and unstructured, and therefore cannot be properly maintained, that is also another issue, but has nothing to do with the programming language, but the programmer.
Imperial’s model appears to be based on a programming language named Fortran, that was old information 20 years ago and, guess what, was that the code used for Mariner 1. This obsolete language includes issues that are inherent it illuminates values, which may give way to \numerous design defects and inaccuracies that are numerical. One file alone in the Imperial model contained 15,000 lines of code.
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This is insane. Fortran was obsolete in the 1980’s never mind the 21st Century. And a 15,000 line (!!!) module just screams bug-ridden spaghetti code. Where in the hell did this Ferguson dig up a code monstrosity like this and decide it was ok to run?