FORTRAN

Early and highly influential programming language designed by IBM in the 1950's, by now primarily used in numerical and scientific computing but on top of the usual inertia and the wide availability of libraries, FORTRAN can produce numerical code that is significantly faster that what you can expect from languages like C and Pascal. While Fortran was a major influence on the European Algol languages in the late 1950's, things have essentially turned around 180 degrees with all FORTRAN standards since the early 70's being heavily influenced by structured Algol derivatives like Pascal and Modula-2.

Classic FORTRAN is always spelled all caps, Fortran 95 and later however are expected to be formatted as other nouns. We tend to use the older conventions here since only a couple of F95 OS/2 implementations showed up and they did not sell well so the bulk of OS/2 programming has traditionally been done in classic FORTRAN.

A list of OS/2 implementations of FORTRAN

• GNU Fortran - Open source - Discontinued
• IBM Fortran/2 - Commercial - Discontinued
• IBM Personal Fortran - Commercial - Discontinued
• IBM Professional Fortran - Commercial - Discontinued
• Microsoft FORTRAN77 - Commercial - Discontinued
• NAS Fortran 90+ - Commercial - Discontinued
• NDP Fortran 90 - Commercial - Discontinued
• Open Watcom FORTRAN 77 - Open Source - Current
• Prospero FORTRAN 77 - Commercial - Discontinued

A list of DOS implementations of FORTRAN

• BC Fortran - Freeware - Discontinued
• F2C - Open Source - Discontiued - Fortran to C translator.
• GNU Fortran - Open source - Discontinued
• Microsoft FORTRAN77 - Commercial - Discontinued
• Open Watcom FORTRAN 77 - Open Source - Current
• Prospero FORTRAN 77 - Commercial - Discontinued

A list of FORTRAN implementations that run under WinOS/2

• Microsoft FORTRAN77 - Commercial - Discontinued
• Prospero FORTRAN 77 - Commercial - Discontinued - 16 bit development possible by cross-compiling from DOS or OS/2 with an optional library/linker package.

A list of FORTRAN implementations that run under Java

• F2J Open source - Current

Publications

Tutorials and other learning material

• Tanja van Mourik: The Fortran 90/95 Manual

Links

USENET

• comp.lang.fortran - Surprisingly popular - Go to the Google groups version if you are newsgroup challenged.

Standards

• John Backus, et al: FORTRAN Automated Coding System For the IBM 704 EDPM - 1956
• FORTRAN II General Information Manual and IBM 7090/7094 Programming Systems: FORTRAN II Programming are the two documents that defined the FORTRAN II standard - 1963
• IBM 7090/7094 Programming Systems: FORTRAN IV Language - 1963 and IBM System 360 and System 370 FORTRAN IV Language - 1974 are the two main documents relating to FORTRAN IV, although the ANSI66 standard had been released FORTRAN IV remained the de facto standard until well after ANSI77 was released.
• ANSI FORTRAN66 Standard - 1967
• ANSI FORTRAN77 Standard - 1978
• Fortran Standards Committee homepage - The home of FORTRAN standardisation since 1966, although usually credited to ANSI the standard is actually developed by "National Committee for Information Technology Standards" (NCITS) nowadays known as "InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards " (INCITS), despite having no presence outside the USA.

FORTRAN History

• Developed primarily by John Backus then working from the IBM headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York City, USA and formally introduced as an optional software for the IBM 704 computer in April 1957 even though IBM had shipped versions in 1956. The basic idea behind FORTRAN was for it to resemble common algebra notation as much as possible.