[ilayn]

NumPy has no Fortran code, for quite a long time now. SciPy has and it is being rewritten. What you mention is the ufunc machinery underneath which is all C. NumPy also has SIMD support (albeit limited to certain functions). BLAS is also C/Assembly but only LAPACK is F77 (which is too much code to be rewritten).

This does not mean Fortran is bad (obligatory disclaimer for Fortran fans).

[nine_k]

Also, Fortran has progressed immensely since F77 days. (I actually wrote some F77 code back in the day, when it was already ancient.) C has also progressed quite a bit since K&R days, but, to my mind, not nearly as much.

[cozzyd]

right, the problem for scipy developers I believe is that not enough of them know fortran, whereas C knowledge is necessary to hack on CPython native extensions.

[holdenweb]

Oh, my God, I actually wrote some code in Fortran 2 back in 1969! It's certainly a much better language now!