The first edition of this book was conceived as a result of my experience writing
and maintaining large Fortran programs in both the defense and geophysical fields.
During my time in industry, it became obvious that the strategies and techniques re-
quired to write large, maintainable Fortran programs were quite different from what
new engineers were learning in their Fortran programming classes at school. The in-
credible cost of maintaining and modifying large programs once they are placed into
service absolutely demands that they be written to be easily understood and modified
by people other than their original programmers. My goal for this book is to teach si-
multaneously both the fundamentals of the Fortran language and a programming style
that results in good, maintainable programs. In addition, it is intended to serve as a
reference for graduates working in industry.
1