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Since Fortran had a large amount of existing code soon after it was invented, the standards committee has always tended to add new features to Fortran after oth
by greglindahl 9y ago
Since Fortran had a large amount of existing code soon after it was invented, the standards committee has always tended to add new features to Fortran after other languages had already tried them out and perhaps discovered pitfalls.
From my experience working on compilers, the thing Fortran begat the most was advanced compiler optimization algorithms, which then trickled down into C and C++.
- nn3 9y agoThat's true for COBOL too. FORTRAN compilers were great for loop optimizations, but not clear if it pioneered much else worthwhile.
- willtim 9y agoFORTRAN pioneered expressions which were used in addition to statements. This was huge. Modern languages are still expanding on the idea of programming with expressions (especially functional languages).