Programming Language Atlas

A structured reference to language families, paradigms, and implementations

Fortran

Imperative, procedural, array. First appeared 1957; array and statistical; numerical and scientific computing.

Record

First appeared1957
FamilyArray and statistical
Paradigm emphasisImperative, procedural, array
TypingStatic, strong
MemoryStatic/manual
ExecutionAOT compiled
Primary domainNumerical and scientific computing
DesignersJohn Backus, IBM
Referencehttps://wg5-fortran.org/
Last verifiednot yet checked against its source by a human

Dates are first public release or publication, not the start of internal development. Colour on the typing and memory tags encodes kind, never rank.

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Influence

No indexed ancestorLisp1958ALGOL 601960BASIC1964Julia2012Fortran1957
Figure 1. Fortran in the influence graph: recorded ancestors on the left, languages that record it as an influence on the right. Every node links to its own record. Edges name indexed languages only, so an empty side means no indexed relative, not none at all. Source: languages.json.

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Within the Array and statistical

Whole-array operations as the primary abstraction, with vectorised semantics in place of explicit element loops.

Language First appeared Typing Memory Execution
APL 1962 Dynamic Tracing GC Interpreted
R 1993 Dynamic Tracing GC Interpreted
Julia 2012 Dynamic with type annotations Tracing GC JIT (LLVM)

3 other languages in this family, ordered by first appearance. Fortran itself is omitted. Source: languages.json.

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