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Why is it a surprise that CS people still talk about something that is, at the moment, alive and well? Fortran remains one of the best ways to get native vectorized code for fast math operations. Yes there are higher abstractions like python, but if you want to write code in the same domain as Fortran, you are using numpy, scipy, pandas, etc., and those are all literally wrappers over low level C and Fortran code. Abstractions don't remove the need for low level, "out-dated" coding models, they just make it easier for most people to build on them.


Keep in mind too that a lot of long scientific simulations are more complicated than vectorized loops or linear algebra. Monte Carlo algorithms were developed to simulate neutrons in the Manhattan project and programmed with the help of Von Neumman.


Reliable automatic vectorization is not an outdated concept by any means.




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