Well, Fortran was intended for use in scientific computation. In the 1950s and 1960s, the percentage of computing time spent on scientific computation was much

Well, Fortran was intended for use in scientific computation. In the 1950s and 1960s, the percentage of computing time spent on scientific computation was much larger than it is today. So, naturally, Fortran had a much more prominent position back then. These days, scientific computing is a relatively minor niche, because people have found so many other things to do with computers that science is just one of many use cases. Fortran was aimed at a specific audience, scientists and engineers, and that audience seems - AFAICT - happy to keep using it. One may consider it an impressive success story. Personally, I have never used Fortran for anything beyond the hello-world-level, so I have no strong opinion on the language as such; I do know it has evolved a lot, probably more so than C.