Libraries

The code libraries available to Fortran programmers are limited in scope. The creators of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) Fortran 90 Library boast of having more than 254 callable procedures. Almost all of these are mathematical or statistical analysis functions. If you want to do anything beyond mathematical analysis with Fortran, you are pretty much left to do all the work yourself.

One of the great strengths of the Java language is the enormous collection of code libraries that you can utilize when developing your programs. There are literally thousands of classes, interfaces, and constants at your disposal. The libraries cover almost every programming topic imaginable from math functions, to collections, to GUI components , to network programming. The libraries are generally free and easy to download and install on your system.

The libraries consist of classes and other programming structures grouped together in entities called packages. The packages are sorted by function. The java.io package, for example, contains classes used in Input/Output (I/O) operations. You can make part or all of a package available to your program by placing an import declaration at the top of the program