why not language X

Google AI,
Perl is not included in the FreeBSD base system and hasn't been for over two decades.
It was officially removed from the base distribution starting with FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE in 2003 to reduce system bloat and simplify cross-compilation
 
cadahl said:
What would the case for Fortran in base even BE?
Click to expand...
Good question.

I can say for sure I am not an advanced Fortran programmer. But afaik (as far as I know) Fortran is the “gold standard” for numerical computations even today.

It compiles really fast and runs smooths as butter from my experience.

Syntax is easy to read. Debugging isn’t fairly that bad for one of the oldest programming languages today in 2026.

Ada is less familiar for me. I’ve been reading it is very much battle-tested
 
And I say, when you want to program which has the best functional & object oriented paradigm you choose F#.
My preferred language bye the way.

Example /usr/bin/head exists. Will you write it in Fortran ? Where would you use Fortran ?
/usr/bin/bc , goes into the direction :)
 
Afaik F# runs on the .NET framework. It’s C-based.

The strength of Fortran is in its computations for numerical arrays.

Numerical computations applies to pretty much everything from embedded devices, mobile, PC/laptops, servers, to the supercomputers.

So pretty much any binary program from base system would benefit here afaict
 
I think the best use of AI is as a "documentation/knowledge engine". Knowing that something exist or is possible and finding its description quickly is a superpower. However, I've recently developed a passion for system and firmware programming, and I've realized that no technical choices should be left to AI. In these cases, I find it's still very far from being capable of optimization or human-like intuition regarding memory state or choosing the right data structure. It's in these moments that it becomes clear: artificial intelligence isn't intelligent, just statistical. Oh, and I forgot, she spends a lot of time flattering my ego, it's embarrassing. really creepy ...
 
Ok lfortran then,
Build dependencies:
  1. bash : shells/bash
  2. re2c>0 : devel/re2c
  3. dwarfdump : devel/dwarfdump
  4. pandoc : textproc/hs-pandoc
  5. rapidjson>0 : devel/rapidjson
  6. bison : devel/bison
  7. cmake : devel/cmake-core
  8. ninja : devel/ninja
  9. pkgconf>=1.3.0_1 : devel/pkgconf
  10. python3.9 : lang/python39
  11. as : devel/binutils
Runtime dependencies:
  1. dwarfdump : devel/dwarfdump
Library dependencies:
  1. libfmt.so : devel/libfmt
  2. libzstd.so : archivers/zstd
  3. libunwind.so : devel/libunwind
  4. libLLVM-15.so : devel/llvm15
  5. libbfd.so : devel/binutils
So see where this is going ...
 
Dear Crivens, when i was young. I thought i found the perfect language.
But can you do a vi editor on a quantum-computer. I don't think so.
Like they say, use the right tool for the right job.
Fortran stdlib depends on gcc13 interesting.

:)
 
Alain De Vos said:
Google AI,
Perl is not included in the FreeBSD base system and hasn't been for over two decades.
It was officially removed from the base distribution starting with FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE in 2003 to reduce system bloat and simplify cross-compilation
Click to expand...
Nope. That was not the reason why it was removed. Guess again.
 
rcbsdpge said:
These are the compilers for Fortran similar to gcc and clang for C
Click to expand...
pkg_tree -v lfortran
lfortran-0.57.0
|\__ zstd-1.5.7
| \__ liblz4-1.10.0,1
|\__ llvm20-20.1.8
| |\__ zstd-1.5.7
| | \__ liblz4-1.10.0,1
| |\__ python311-3.11.14
| | |\__ readline-8.2.13_2
| | | \__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
| | |\__ mpdecimal-4.0.1
| | |\__ libffi-3.5.1
| | | \__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
| | \__ gettext-runtime-0.23.1
| | \__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
| |\__ perl5-5.42.0_1
| |\__ lua54-5.4.8
| | \__ libedit-3.1.20250104,1
| |\__ libxml2-2.14.5
| | \__ readline-8.2.13_2
| | \__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
| \__ libedit-3.1.20250104,1
|\__ libunwind-20250904
|\__ libfmt-11.2.0
|\__ kokkos-4.5.01
| \__ bash-5.3.3_2
| |\__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
| \__ gettext-runtime-0.23.1
| \__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
|\__ dwarfdump-20161124_1
\__ binutils-2.44,1
|\__ zstd-1.5.7
| \__ liblz4-1.10.0,1
\__ indexinfo-0.3.1_1
 
My only encounter with Fortran was during the second year at the Uni. We had an exam in which we had to write programs in Pascal and Fortran.

I knew Pascal already so that part was easy but didn't know a single word of Fortran. I learned the minimum needed to pass the exam and forgot everything almost instantly.

35 years have passed since then and I never had another single moment, either at the University of in my professional career, in which I needed to master even the smallest bit of Fortran.
 
Alain De Vos said:
- idiosyncratic shortcuts
- difficult-to-debug
- difficult parsing
Click to expand...
Wrong again.

Perl uses its own configure script. It configures differently on each architecture. IWhen upgrading the committer had to pretty much build it by hand on each architecture in order to glean the discovered configuration files. It was never a straightforward apply the patch and buildworld. In the end nobody ever updated it because of the effort required to import updates into base.

It was decided to simply remove it from base and replace the perl parts of buildworld with awk and sed scripts.

Additionally, Perl syntax can change significantly from version to version. That didn't help either.
 
Code: 
     candoi=1,10
        call somefunc(pi)
        continue
Any guesses? And don't get me onto common grounds. No, Fortran does not belong into base.
 
Was surprised to see Haxe pop up here (thought it has ~0 intersection with FreeBSD, but in retrospect why not of course, they are orthogonal... maybe as seen from the build issue, too much orthogonal).

I have a bit of history using Haxe. Mostly pre-3.0 and a bit of low-3.0. Was keeping an eye on new developments every now and then, it seems it is going in good directions. Was always fascinated how well-rounded the language was, with so many build targets supported. It always had a tiny bit of amateurish joy surrounding it, mostly in the good sense. The downside was it never felt 100% production oriented, and carried that "better ActionsScript" mood along with it.

What are you working on in Haxe?
 
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