What Does FORTRAN Stand For?

FORTRAN stands for The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System Programming Language

FORTRAN (short for "Formula Translation") is one of the earliest high-level programming languages, developed in the 1950s by IBM for scientific and engineering applications. Initially created by John Backus and his team, FORTRAN revolutionized computing by allowing programmers to express mathematical formulas more naturally, without needing to write in low-level machine code. Its first version, FORTRAN I, was released in 1957. FORTRAN quickly gained popularity for its efficiency in performing numerical and computational tasks, making it a dominant language in fields such as physics, chemistry, and weather modeling. Over the years, it evolved through multiple versions, including FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 77, and modern versions like FORTRAN 90, 95, 2003, and 2008, which introduced new features such as modular programming, array handling, and object-oriented capabilities. FORTRAN's main strength lies in its ability to handle large-scale numerical data and complex mathematical computations efficiently. Its use of arrays, loops, and conditionals made it ideal for iterative scientific computations. Although newer languages like Python and MATLAB have become more popular in some scientific domains, FORTRAN remains widely used in legacy systems and high-performance computing tasks that require maximum computational efficiency.

Category : Computers

FORTRAN is an Acronym

Other Meanings for FORTRAN