• Well-documented: The netCDF Fortran-77 Users Guide is complete and up-to-date, and reference documentation is maintained in man-page form.
• Comprehensively tested: A large number of tests are run when the netCDF Fortran-77 library is installed from source.
• Support for netCDF-4: the F77 API supports the extended data model of netCDF-4 (but using some advanced features may make your code unportable.)

• Uses character arrays as a substitute for strings, so user must be aware of string lengths.
• Fortran's column-major subscript order is different from CDL's row-major order, whcih can make ncdump's CDL output confusing.
• Memory handling: You have to provide memory space for any netCDF data values and attribute values you read.
• Error handling: The status of every function call must be checked, which detracts from code clarity.

• Implemented in C, as a thin layer on top of the C netCDF library.

Annotated examples of complete Fortran77 netCDF programs are available from the program examples page.

2010 Unidata NetCDF Workshop > Introduction to the NetCDF APIs and Example Programs