My first language, I should try and mess with it again. It has been decades since I used it.
hermitcrab•9m ago
I believe it has changed quite a lot, keeping its focus for scientific/engineering computing, but adapting more modern language constructs. I'm not sure how much of the archaic stuff (COMMON blocks, ENTRY points etc) is supported in the more recent standards for backward compatibility.
Frone125•22m ago
It's crazy to think that any programming language is that old.
tasty_freeze•13m ago
As someone who has been programming for nearly 50 years of it, it seems less remarkable.
hotelsacher•22m ago
Happy birthday! I think this has to be the oldest programming language still in use. 70 years is quite an eternity in the sphere of computing. Before Fortran, there was (almost?) nothing but assembler and plug board connectors.
ryan_glass•21m ago
In the mid 90s I used Fortran to model a distillation column in a chemical engineering plant. Here I read that it is still the go to language for nuclear engineering. I am amazed but for some reason happy about this.
hermitcrab•17m ago
"A good FORTRAN programmer can write FORTRAN in any language"
hermitcrab•12m ago
I started off programming in FORTRAN in my first job, 40 years ago. There was a lot of terrible stuff in FORTRAN from a software engineering point of view: COMMON blocks, GOTOs, ENTRY points (to enter a subroutine part way through!), but it was one of the first high level language and language designers had a lot to learn.
jmclnx•24m ago
hermitcrab•9m ago