Fortran
/FOR-tran/ · noun · Development · Origin: 1957
Definitions
The first widely used high-level programming language, originally developed for scientific and engineering computation. Fortran (Formula Translation) remains dominant in high-performance computing, weather modeling, and computational physics, where its optimized array operations and mature compiler ecosystem are unmatched.
In plain English: One of the oldest programming languages, still used for heavy-duty scientific calculations and weather forecasting because it's extremely fast with numbers.
Example: The climate model runs on Fortran 90 code that's been continuously maintained since 1985 — and it's still faster than the C++ rewrite attempt.
Origin Story
IBM's FORmula TRANslator that proved compilers were possible
In 1953, John Backus at IBM proposed creating a language that would let scientists write mathematical formulas directly, which a program would translate into machine code. Most engineers were skeptical -- they believed hand-written assembly would always be faster.
Backus and his team spent three years building the **FORTRAN** compiler (FORmula TRANslation), released in 1957. It was the first commercially successful high-level programming language. The compiler produced code nearly as efficient as hand-tuned assembly, silencing the skeptics.
Fortran dominated scientific and engineering computing for decades and pioneered many concepts we take for granted: the `DO` loop, the `IF` statement, and the idea of an optimizing compiler. Modern Fortran (the capitalization changed in Fortran 90) remains heavily used in weather forecasting, computational physics, and high-performance computing.
Coined by: John Backus and the IBM team
Context: IBM, 1957
Fun fact: Early Fortran had no lowercase letters and punished formatting errors mercilessly -- a misplaced space could change a DO loop into a variable assignment. The Mariner 1 spacecraft was reportedly lost due to a Fortran-like bug (though this is debated).