At least among my colleagues (process engineering) the language is basically an afterthought. Your slide rule analogy is right on. For a lot of the people I wo

At least among my colleagues (process engineering) the language is basically an afterthought. Your slide rule analogy is right on. For a lot of the people I work with code is just a way of representing mathematics. So you end up with "Fortran written in every language" Here is a snippet of code (this is written in C but I guarantee most of my colleagues would write this the same regardless of it it were fortran, python, Matlab what ever). for (i=m1;i < m2; i++) { //f(p)^2 = (u^T)(Q^T)(D^2)Qu and F(dF/dp) = (u^T)(Q^T)(D^2)Q(du/dp) g =h; h = (v[i+1]-v[i])/(x[i+1]-x[i]); g = h - g - r1[i-1]*r[i-1]-r2[i-2]*r[i-2]; ... } Here's some SQL SELECT t2.Line, t2.Slope, t1.X, t1.Y, t1.Y - (t2.Slope * t1.X) as Intercept /* B = Y -Mx */