FORTRAN (Formula Translation) - definition

FORTRAN (Formula Translation) is one of the oldest high-level programming languages, designed in the 1950s by an IBM team led by John Backus. Its main purpose was to allow mathematical and scientific calculations to be written efficiently in a form that approximated algebraic notation, greatly simplifying the development of programs compared to low-level machine code. FORTRAN was the first language to allow automatic compilation of source code into executable form, revolutionising the approach to computer programming.

The FORTRAN language is distinguished by its simple, concise syntax and high performance, making it particularly suitable for engineering, numerical and scientific applications. In particular, it has found widespread use in areas such as computational mechanics, structural analysis, physical simulations, fluid dynamics and quantum computing, where operations on matrices, vectors and floating point numbers dominate.

FORTRAN has undergone a number of standards evolutions, from FORTRAN I and FORTRAN IV, through FORTRAN 77, to the more modern FORTRAN 90, 95, 2003, 2008 and 2018, with each successive version introducing language extensions such as dynamic memory management, modular programming, support for abstract types, parallelism and compatibility with object-oriented standards. Despite the emergence of new programming languages, FORTRAN remains an essential tool in scientific and computing environments where maximum performance and a proven infrastructure are important.

One of the key advantages of FORTRAN is the advanced code optimisation by Compilers, which can generate very fast executable code, especially for applications that make intensive use of arithmetic operations. As a result, the language still forms the basis of many numerical libraries, simulation packages and large engineering systems whose maintenance and development require precision, stability and high computational efficiency.

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