FORTRAN

Technology & Computing abbreviation · Programming

FORTRAN stands for Formula Translation, a programming abbreviation.

One of the oldest high-level programming languages, designed for numerical and scientific computing and still widely used in weather forecasting, physics simulations and supercomputing. Its compilers produce very fast array and math code.

Example: The climate model's core is written in FORTRAN, with Python scripts for analysis.

Usage notes

Developed at IBM by a team led by John Backus, with the first compiler delivered in 1957. Since the Fortran 90 standard the official spelling has been mixed case, "Fortran". Recent standards add parallel programming features. Numerical libraries such as BLAS and LAPACK were originally written in it.

Related abbreviations

More programming abbreviations

• EOF – End of file
• EOL – End of line
• ESB – Enterprise service bus
• ESM – ECMAScript modules
• FFI – Foreign function interface
• FIFO – First in, first out
• FP – Functional programming
• FSM – Finite-state machine
• GC – Garbage collection
• GCC – GNU Compiler Collection
• GDB – GNU Debugger
• GIL – Global interpreter lock

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