I fully agree with you that scripting languages are a great fit for scientific computing. But I just don't see how this is a case for Fortran.
R or Python are still much easier to use and give you the same access to high-performance numerical accelerators via BLAS/LAPACK backends. And if you need a low-level language (e.g when developing an optimised routine that solves a specific problem), I would use a high-performance widely supported systems programming language like C++ or Rust.
Fortran seems to be around mostly for legacy reasons. And I am not sure that legacy considerations alone make a good foundation.
R or Python are still much easier to use and give you the same access to high-performance numerical accelerators via BLAS/LAPACK backends. And if you need a low-level language (e.g when developing an optimised routine that solves a specific problem), I would use a high-performance widely supported systems programming language like C++ or Rust.
Fortran seems to be around mostly for legacy reasons. And I am not sure that legacy considerations alone make a good foundation.