FORTRAN

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Fortran, better known as a "FORmula TRANslator". Its primary use was in Scientific and Engineering disciplines. FORTRAN runs on big machines like mainframes, supercomputers, minicomputers and even down to 8 bit CP/M machines. It's a relatively portable language, however many vendors have extended the language in unique and incompatible ways. However over the years FORTRANs popularity has significantly waned, although there is still a significant amount of legacy code out there.

Dialects

Fortran exists in many dialects.

  • FORTRAN II (was also known as "FORTRAN with subroutines"?)
  • FORTRAN IV
  • FORTRAN 66
  • FORTRAN 77
  • FORTRAN 90
  • FORTRAN 95

Hello World

This is a simple FORTRAN program.

C23456789012345678901234567890
      program hello 
      print *, 'Hello!' 
      end

Folklore

Fortran is mentioned in the well-known rant "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal".

Popular Compilers

Popular Fortran Programs