The next revision of Fortran (nominally scheduled for 2028) will include support for generic programming in the form of type-safe templates. The design of this feature set, including the emphasis on type-safety, has appreciably benefited from experience with analogous capabilities in other major programming languages. In this talk I start with a brief history of Fortran that highlights the introduction of major language features and with a particular focus on existing support for generic programming. I then proceed with a description of the planned templating facility including compromises that arise due to the need for backward compatibility and quirks of Fortran. I conclude with my expectations for further extensions of Fortran templates beyond the F2028 revision.

Dr. Thomas Clune is a senior computational scientist at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center where he leads the Software Infrastructure (SI) team of the GEOS data assimilation system within the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. Dr. Clune also serves as NASA’s official representative on the Fortran language standard committee, where he is currently the the head of the subgroup focused on generic programming features.