Fortran programming language

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In 1954, John Warner Backus, a development team leader at IBM, published papers that began the development of the FORTRAN programming language. His papers included "Preliminary Report" and "Specifications for the IBM Matmal Transmula TRANslating System." Two years later, his team produced the first Fortran compiler, designed for the IBM 704 and containing 25,000 lines of code. Initially, the name Fortran was written in capital letters — FORTRAN — and this form was used in all versions until Fortran 77. With the release of Fortran 90, a new spelling was used, which was also adopted for free versions of the language.

A peculiarity of Fortran 77 was that the language did not bulk email campaigns officially support lowercase letters, but many compilers provided this capability as an additional feature. Evolution of the Fortran programming language The development of the first Fortran compiler, begun in 1954 and completed in 1957, marked the introduction of a new era in programming. At a time when high-level symbolic systems did not yet exist and operating systems were simple, the first Fortran compiler was developed specifically for the IBM 704 and quickly proved its effectiveness over assembler, which contributed to its widespread adoption.



Fortran continued to evolve, with Fortran II introduced in 1958, followed by Fortran IV in 1961, which introduced improved COMMON and EQUIVALENCE statements. Standardization of the language began in the United States in 1962, allowing Fortran to be used on all modern computers, including Apple and TRS80 systems. The first international standard for HLL was established in Fortran 66 in 1967, which greatly expanded the use of the language. An important aspect of Fortran 66 was the use of if-statements, goto-statements, and spaghetti code, which were popular in the 60s and 70s. However, until Fortran 90, whitespace in the code between the 7th and 72nd columns was ignored, leading to different interpretations of the code.

Fortran 90, compatible with Fortran 77, introduced significant changes to ensure compatibility with previous versions, although subsequent developments may not have followed this requirement. Modern versions of Fortran, including Fortran 2003, have been updated to support modern 64-bit processors and Linux development using the object-oriented Actor Fortran system. This confirms that Fortran remains an important tool in modern software engineering. Fundamentals of Fortran Program Structure Fortran programming involves the use of library elements such as the main program text, modules, external subroutines, and procedures. The program structure includes computer instructions and data, which can be supplemented by various modules.