cd /news/artificial-intelligence/scientists-are-using-artificial-inte… · home topics artificial-intelligence article
[ARTICLE · art-116230] src=fortran-lang.discourse.group ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=↑ positive

Scientists are using artificial intelligence and large language models to rewrite old code in modern languages

Scientists are using artificial intelligence and large language models to rewrite old code in modern languages, as demonstrated by a developer who translated Matplotlib to pure Fortran using AI assistance. The resulting pyplot-fortran library supports svg, png, pdf, and gif backends, all implemented in pure Fortran, and is used in JupyterLite notebooks for LFortran. The developer noted that AI made the translation process 'super easy,' enabling a full ecosystem in pure Fortran.

read1 min views1 publishedAug 31, 2026

Beautiful. I can see you are using your own pyplot-fortran, which is constructing a Python string and evaluating it in Python (right?).

I figured, let’s translate Matplotlib to Fortran, to be more consistent with this thread:

It is 100% pure Fortran, the usual pyplot-style API, and it has svg, png, pdf (and even gif!) backends, the backends are all in pure Fortran, they generate the svg text, or png/pdf/gif binary. I embed the glyphs of a font directly into Fortran sources, support latex-style math rendering, etc.

I needed something to use in the JupyterLite notebooks that LFortran now supports, so since it runs in the browser and must be fast, I needed to generate svg/png directly in pure Fortran.

Anyway, it was super easy to do this thanks to AI, so I think we can now have the full ecosystem from plotting, file formats everything in pure Fortran.

── more in #artificial-intelligence 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @matplotlib 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/scientists-are-using…] indexed:0 read:1min 2026-08-31 ·