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Why is PETSc programmed in C, instead of Fortran or C++?

April 26, 2017FORTRAN petsc programmed

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Why is PETSc programmed in C, instead of Fortran or C++?

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C enables us to build data structures for storing sparse matrices, solver information, etc. in ways that Fortran simply does not allow. ANSI C is a complete standard that all modern C compilers support. The language is identical on all machines. C++ is still evolving and compilers on different machines are not identical. Using C function pointers to provide data encapsulation and polymorphism allows us to get many of the advantages of C++ without using such a large and more complicated language. It would be natural and reasonable to have coded PETSc in C++; we opted to use C instead.