ARCHIVED: What is Fortran, and where can I learn more about it?

This content has been archived, and is no longer maintained by Indiana University. Information here may no longer be accurate, and links may no longer be available or reliable.

Fortran is a general-purpose programming language that is especially popular among scientists and engineers. It is the oldest of the high-level languages, dating back to an IBM project in the mid-1950s. The name "FORTRAN" comes from the title of an internal IBM report written in November 1954 by J.W. Backus, H. Herrick, and I. Ziller, "Specifications for the IBM Mathematical FORmula TRANslating System, FORTRAN". Fortran is continually being revised and updated, with five ANSI standards (Fortran 77, Fortran 90, Fortran 95, Fortran 2003, and Fortran 2008) released.

There are a number of Fortran dialects, including F and ELF. F is a subset of Fortran 90 designed as a simple yet powerful language for beginning programmers. ELF, also a subset of Fortran 90, is similar to F, but is available only for Intel-based computers.

For more, see The Fortran Company, or the Fortran newsgroup comp.lang.fortran.

This is document afmc in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-04-21 16:56:11.