FORTRAN ON YOUR COMPUTER

If you want to install fortran on your personal computer, you have two options: (1) to buy a commercial package designed specifically for your operating system, or (2) install one of the free compilers. Generally speaking, the commercial compilers will be bug-free, will have lots of useful features (such as window-based debuggers and development tools), and will be well-documented. Your experience with free compilers will most likely vary depending on which operating system you are using. There are excellent free compilers for unix operating systems (e.g. linux, mac os) and you will have good experiences with these. If you are limited to one of the Microsoft operating systems, you have fewer options for good free fortran compilers. See the relevant section below for your operating system

Linux
In my opinion, the best free fortran compiler for linux is the one offered by intel. This is a commercial compiler that happens to be offered for free for non-commercial purposes under linux. I have used this compiler for many years and have been extremely pleased. It comes with full documentation, debuggers, and performance analyzers.

Another good compiler is gfortran. This is part of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), a very active and heavily used piece of community software. Not quite as flashy as the intel compiler, but solid and reasonably well-documented.

Mac OS
The best choice for mac is gfortran. See the discussion above in the "linux" section.

Windows
It is possible to install gfortran. under windows. Until recently, this entailed installing either cygwin or mingw first in order to produce a unix command emulator. Although I have not tried it, it is now evidently possible to install a "native windows" version of gfortran. See the notes on gfortran under the "linux" section above for a general description of gfortran. Since gfortran for windows is not part of the mainstream GCC development, is likely that your experience installing and running gfortran under windows will not be as good as with linux or mac.

There are a few sites around with streamlined install procedures for older versions of gfortran (formerly called g77). These are
Fortran Forever
F99
The Space Research Centre.

A reportedly good compiler is available from Salford. This compiler is free for non-commercial use.

A low-cost commercial compiler is available from Lahey.com

There are undoubtedly several other fortran vendors as well as other avenues for free compilers. If you are not satisfied with the above links, it may be worth the effort to search the web for combinations such as "Microsoft AND fortran AND compiler AND free".


FORTRAN TUTORIAL

Clive Page has written a short book on fortran which is available for free from his website at The Space Research Centre.

Fortran programming guide pdf file