What is Fortran?
Fortran is the most widely used programming language in the world for numerical applications. It has achieved this position partly by being on the scene earlier than any of the other major languages and partly because it seems gradually to have evolved the features which its users, especially scientists and engineers, found most useful. In order to retain compatibility with old programs, Fortran has advanced mainly by adding new features rather than by removing old ones. The net result is, of course, that some parts of the language are, by present standards, rather archaic: some of these can be avoided easily, others can still be a nuisance. This section gives a brief history of the language, outlines its future prospects, and summarises its strengths and weaknesses.
FORTRAN is a portmanteau that was originally derived from the IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System. Fortran is primarily used in the scientific and engineering communities, who rely on this ancient high-level programming language to perform some of the most meticulous supercomputing tasks such as computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, quantum chromodynamics, solar system dynamic simulations, simulations of automobile crash dynamics, weather and climate modeling.
Fortran is an imperative computer programming language. Once written as FORTRAN, the programming language is also considered general purpose and procedural. It was developed in the 1950s by International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and was intended for use in scientific and engineering related applications. Since its design, Fortran has been steadily used for scientific and numerical computing, especially in such areas as computational sciences and climate modeling. In fact, it is the most commonly used numerical programming language in existence. Some speculate that Fortran achieved its popularity because it was designed before many of the other major languages. Others assert that its wide use is due to the gradual adding on and development of features vital to science and engineering users. Perhaps equally important is the fact that Fortran maintains its compatibility with older versions, adding new components, instead of eliminating outdated features. A good deal of its popu
