{"slug": "some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments", "title": "Some news about gtk-fortran and AI experiments", "summary": "A gtk-fortran maintainer used a free Mistral AI account to fix three long-standing bugs that had persisted for 2 to 6 years and to convert a 1991 GFA Basic 3.5 astronomical ephemerides program, via its 1995 Visual Basic port, into modern Fortran with gtk-fortran GUIs. The AI agent also produced a new 689-line hl_tree.f90 example using GtkColumnView to replace deprecated GtkTreeView usage, though the maintainer said he has no time to review it and wants to keep gtk-fortran \"simple stupid\" rather than inflate the repository. The maintainer warned the tools could become addictive and said he needs discipline to focus on what he really needs to build.", "body_md": "I have not much time this autumn to work on gtk-fortran. But I am doing some experiments with IA agents concerning coding. I am using just a free account on Mistral AI (a French company) and most of the time I just use the Chat section because the number of sessions in the code tool is limited in my free account.\n\nBut that tool allowed me to fix quickly three long-standing bugs (2 to 6 years):\n\nAI tools can analyze so quickly so much more documentation, code and issues than me…\n\nA long time ago (1991) I wrote an astronomical ephemerides program in GFA Basic 3.5 on my Atari ST. I first prompted the AI agent to convert it in Rust, and it did it, replacing the GEM windows by SGV files. Then I took the version I had ported to Visual Basic in 1995, whose code I had happily exported in text files, containing the code and also a description of the associated windows. I asked Mistral AI to convert it in modern Fortran using gtk-fortran for the GUI. And it did… Just a few prompts. Just a few other prompts to translate everything in English and polish the display:\n\nSometimes you can have little troubles. For example, the agent may “thought” logically that the Cairo enums are in the `cairo` module, but no, in gtk-fortran all enums were put in the `gtk` module. And no, the GLib module is not `glib` but `g`. But prompting the error messages is generally sufficient to go forward.\n\nFour examples are using GtkTreeView via the HL library, but it is deprecated in favor of GtkListView for lists, and GtkColumnView for tabular lists. So I asked to create a new `hl_tree.f90` example by an example using GtkColumnView, and obtained it :\n\n689 lines I have no time to dive in and understand. Mistral AI even asked me if I wanted a new module `hl_gtkcolumview.f90` to simplify the example… I could cite a few other experiments.\n\nSome things have already been pushed, others will be after review and some won’t. Or maybe in gtk-fortran-extra. I feel that I should keep gtk-fortran simple stupid. There is already more than enough code to maintain (for my little person). I don’t want to inflate the repository. But I think AI agents can be used reasonably, especially to work on long standing problems and hard bugs, and therefore to improve the quality of the project.\n\nAnd if people need more elaborate functionalities, I know they can do like me and obtain it within a few prompts! Maybe I will add a page in the doc with examples of prompts. Although I am not even sure it is necessary, so powerful are those tools.\n\nFinally, I feel I could lose a lot of time with those tools, creating many things I don’t really need, just because I can create them. I feel it could become addictive. So it seems I need some discipline to concentrate on what I really need and want to make. And think.\n\nConclusions:", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments", "canonical_source": "https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments/11307#post_1", "published_at": "2026-11-15 15:00:47+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-15 15:19:57.402316+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "generative-ai", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["gtk-fortran", "Mistral AI", "GFA Basic 3.5", "Atari ST", "Visual Basic", "Rust", "Fortran", "GtkColumnView"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/some-news-about-gtk-fortran-and-ai-experiments.jsonld"}}