The invention of computer programming allowed humanity to step over a certain level of its development and create an almost new civilization. Many programming languages have been developed today, but which one is the pioneer that started the new computer era?
Formula translator
The first implemented high-level computer programming language is FORmula TRANslator. It was created by a group of IBM programmers between 1954 and 1957. A few years after its creation, the commercial sales of Fortran began - before that programming was carried out either using machine codes or symbolic assemblers.
First of all, Fortran became widespread in the scientific and engineering environment, where calculations were carried out on it.
One of the main advantages of today's Fortran is the huge number of programs and subroutine libraries written in it. In thousands of packages of this language, you can find packages for solving complex integral equations, matrix multiplication, and so on. These packages have been created over many decades - they have not lost their relevance to this day. Most of their libraries are well documented, debugged and highly efficient, but their Fortran code is constantly being automatically converted into modern programming languages.
Fortran implementation history
After the development of an effective alternative language called Fortran, the computing community was skeptical about the new product. Few believed that Fortran would make programming faster and more efficient. However, over time, scientists appreciated the capabilities of the language and began to actively use it to write intensive software computations. Fortran was especially suitable for technical applications, in which it was greatly helped by the complex collection of all types of data.
Modern Fortran has been supplemented with capabilities that make it possible to effectively apply new software technologies and program computational architectures.
After Fortran's overwhelming success, European companies began to fear that IBM would take the lead in the computer industry. The American and German communities created their committees for the development of a universal programming language, but later they merged into one committee. Its specialists developed a new language and named it International Algorithmic Language (IAL), but since ALGOrithmic Language quickly became a common name for the novelty, the committee had to change the official name of the IAL committee to Algol.
