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Fortran
Also Known As Formula Translation
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Fortran, from Formula Translation, is a programming language released by IBM in 1957 for scientific and engineering computation, and is generally regarded as the first widely used high level programming language, letting programmers write formulas in something closer to ordinary mathematical notation instead of machine instructions. Designed by a team led by John Backus, it remains in active use today in high performance scientific computing, and its early success helped establish that programs written in a human readable language could run about as fast as hand written machine code, a claim doubted by many at the time.
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First Released SignificanceThe first widely used high level programming language, proving that compiled code could rival hand written machine code in speed. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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