FORTRAN

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.

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