Fortran
On the Programming languages bookshelf.
FORTRAN is a programming language mainly used by the scientific community. Its name is a contraction of FORmula TRANslation, and its aim is to provide a way to tell computers to calculate equations.
FORTRAN is very old. The original versions used punched cards to program with. FORTRAN's age is both a strength and a weakness. On one hand, FORTRAN has a huge number of libraries of code avaliable to work out almost any equation. However, its age also gives FORTRAN archaic features, especially in the earliest formats, such as FORTRAN-77.
Problems with F77 included the not-so-intuitive syntax, and requiring 6 spaces before any commands. However, most of these problems were fixed as newer specifications for FORTRAN came out: Fortran 90 and 95. In addition, many compilers have additional improvements for non-standard code. The F95 and F90 specifications differ very little.
About FORTRAN
Overview
If you have programmed before and would like to see a little bit of how Fortran works and is different from other programming languages, read this overview.
A quick overview of the differences between the F77, F90 and F95 versions.
Introduction to Fortran
- Hello World
- Beginning Fortran
- Variables
- Simple Input and Output
- Simple math in Fortran
- Program Flow
- Subroutines and Functions
- Modules
In-depth Fortran ideas
- Preprocessing
- String Manipulation
- Programming Structure and Style
- Fortran complex types
- Memory Management & Common Blocks
- Error Catching
Fortran and beyond