The first FORTRAN compiler used this weighting to perform at compile time a Monte Carlo simulation of the generated code, the results of which were used to optimize the placement of basic blocks in memory-a very sophisticated optimization for its time. The FREQUENCY statement was used originally (and optionally) to give branch probabilities for the three branch cases of the arithmetic IF statement. This deficiency was later overcome by "logical" facilities introduced in FORTRAN IV. The statement provided the only way to compare numbers-by testing their difference, with an attendant risk of overflow. The arithmetic IF statement was reminiscent of (but not readily implementable by) a three-way comparison instruction (CAS-Compare Accumulator with Storage) available on the 704. FREQUENCY statement (for providing optimization hints to the compiler). Other I/O: END FILE, REWIND, and BACKSPACE.Unformatted I/O: READ TAPE, READ DRUM, WRITE TAPE, and WRITE DRUM.Formatted I/O: FORMAT, READ, READ INPUT TAPE, WRITE, WRITE OUTPUT TAPE, PRINT, and PUNCH.GO TO, computed GO TO, ASSIGN, and assigned GO TO.IF statements for checking exceptions ( ACCUMULATOR OVERFLOW, QUOTIENT OVERFLOW, and DIVIDE CHECK) and IF statements for manipulating sense switches and sense lights.Three-way arithmetic IF statement, which passed control to one of three locations in the program depending on whether the result of the arithmetic statement was negative, zero, or positive.The initial release of FORTRAN for the IBM 704 contained 32 statements, including: The development of Fortran paralleled the early evolution of compiler technology, and many advances in the theory and design of compilers were specifically motivated by the need to generate efficient code for Fortran programs. For these reasons, FORTRAN is considered to be the first widely used cross-platform programming language. Significantly, the increasing popularity of FORTRAN spurred competing computer manufacturers to provide FORTRAN compilers for their machines, so that by 1963 over 40 FORTRAN compilers existed. īy 1960, versions of FORTRAN were available for the IBM 709, 650, 1620, and 7090 computers. The inclusion of a complex number data type in the language made Fortran especially suited to technical applications such as electrical engineering. The language was widely adopted by scientists for writing numerically intensive programs, which encouraged compiler writers to produce compilers that could generate faster and more efficient code. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701, writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs." John Backus said during a 1979 interview with Think, the IBM employee magazine, "Much of my work has come from being lazy. While the community was skeptical that this new method could possibly outperform hand-coding, it reduced the number of programming statements necessary to operate a machine by a factor of 20, and quickly gained acceptance. : 75 This was the first optimizing compiler, because customers were reluctant to use a high-level programming language unless its compiler could generate code with performance approaching that of hand-coded assembly language. : 71 The first manual for FORTRAN appeared in October 1956, : 72 with the first FORTRAN compiler delivered in April 1957. The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 (October 15, 1956), the first programmer's reference manual for Fortran Ī draft specification for The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System was completed by November 1954. It is a popular language for high-performance computing and is used for programs that benchmark and rank the world's fastest supercomputers. It has been in use for over six decades in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography and computational chemistry. Absoft, Cray, GFortran, G95, IBM XL Fortran, Intel, Hitachi, Lahey/Fujitsu, Numerical Algorithms Group, Open Watcom, PathScale, PGI, Silverfrost, Oracle Solaris Studio, othersĪLGOL 58, BASIC, C, Chapel, CMS-2, DOPE, Fortress, PL/I, PACT I, MUMPS, IDL, Ratforįortran ( / ˈ f ɔːr t r æ n/ formerly FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.įortran was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing.
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