Fortran Article

Introduction

Fortran is a general-purpose, compiled imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.

It was originally develope by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications. It was designed by John Backus. It has influenced many different languages such as the C-Family languages and Fortress.

At 60+ years old, Fortran is one of the oldest programming languages.

Features

Fortran includes many features such as:

If Statements
Do Loops
Go To and Assign Statements
3-way Arithmetic
Dimension and equivalence Statements
Pause, Stop and Continue
I/O such as Format, Read, etc

Pros/Cons

Fortran has its pros and cons:

Pros	Cons
Fortran is very strong in scientific circles. It has a rich ecosystem of tools for this domain.	Declaring Fortran variables can be a bit tedious, as if you mispell them by accident, Fortran might accidentally create two variables when you have only intended to use one.
Fortran generates the fastest native code in the world. That's why it's ideal for scientific computing.	Most modern versions have a closed source compiler, it is not that popular anymore and there is less demand for it than there once was.
Fortran is highly optimized for vectorisation which makes it great for supercomputer modelling.	Fortran has liberal rules and an extensive system of default values, whilst this reduces programming effort it also makes it harder for the system to detect the programmer's mistakes.
Modern Fortran is actually surprisingly readable and easy to understand, especially comapred to languages like C++.	Fortran lacks various control and data structures, which simplify programming languages wih a more modern design, however these limitations were eliminated with the advent of Fortran90.

Extra Programs

Related Languages - Fortress, C, C++, Java, javascript
Mathematical Programs - Latex, Wolframalpha
Other - Basic Computing, Scientific Computing.

Sources

Summary

In conclusion:

Fortran is a very old language that is not much today in most modern applications, and hence is not in high demand for new jobs so it would seem like it is not a very good choice to learn. However, for Scientific Computing projects, Fortran is a good choice to use, due to readbility and ease of coding. It is still a popular languages for large statistical and scientific applications.