FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) is a third- generation ( 3GL)
programming language that was designed for use by engines, mathematics, and
other users and creators of scientific algorithms. It has a very succinct and
Spartan syntax. Today, the C language has largely displaced FORTRAN.
History
One of the oldest programming language, the RORTRAN was developed by a team of programmers at IBM
led by John Backus, and was first
published in 1957. The name FORTRAN is an acronym for RORmula TRANslation,
because it was designed to allow easy translation of math formulas into code.
Often referred to as a scientific language, FORTRAN was the
first high-level language, using the first compiler ever developed. Prior
programmers were required to program in machine/ assembly code, which was an
extremely difficult and time consuming task, not to mention the dreadful
chore of debugging the code. The
objective during it’s design was to created a programming language that would
be: simple to learn, suitable for a wide
variety of applications, machine independent, and would allow complex
mathematical expression to be stated similarly to regular algebra notation.
While still being almost as efficient in execution as assembly language. Since
FORTRAN was so easier to code, programmers were
able to write execution efficiency was only reduced by 20%, this allowed
them to focus more on the problem
solving aspects of a problem, and less on coding.
RORTRAN was so
innovative vot only because it was the first high level language, but also
because of it’s compiler, which is created as giving rise to the branch of computer science now known as compiler
theory. Several years after it’s release
FORTRAN had developed many different dialects, making it very difficult to
transfer programs from one machine to another.
