Fortran?
I recently went back to school to get a masters in Mechanical Engineering. My undergrad (2008 grad, eesh) is a Bachelors in Materials Science and Engineering, and I somehow never needed Fortran during my undergraduate or the 17 years that I’ve been working as an engineer.
However, the most recent class that I’m signed up for (Finite element analysis) just sent out the syllabus and it says that we absolutely need to know Fortran for the class.
I’m considering dropping the class and adding a Fortran class, but is this language still a thing? I never took Fortran in undergrad because my mom is a software engineer from way back in the day and said Fortran is worthless. She’s not a mechanical engineer though so what might be worthless for her stuff might still be relevant in mechanical engineering. I don’t know of any uses for Fortran in my current job though.
Is this requirement going to keep biting me in the ass if I don’t learn the language? I can use it as an elective (it’ll count towards my degree) but there are more interesting classes I can take instead, so I’d prefer not to if I don’t have to.
So what do you guys think? Am I going to keep seeing this requirement going forward?