Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran

Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by hotelsacher on Thursday October 15, 2026 @11:21AM (#50104992)

Happy birthday! I think this has to be the oldest programming language still in use. 70 years is quite an eternity in the sphere of computing. Before Fortran, there was (almost?) nothing but assembler and plug board connectors.

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Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by jibalt on Thursday October 15, 2026 @11:47AM (#50105390)

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/397792-ol...

It beats LISP by a year and COBOL by two years.

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Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by leoc on Thursday October 15, 2026 @01:44PM (#50107334)

And Fortran doesn’t just predate Lisp, it’s a direct ancestor. McCarthy was talking about LISP as a FORTRAN extension for quite a while during LISP’s development. The original Fortran is effectively LISP 0.

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Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by Qem on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:05AM (#50118557)

It's only another 30 years before we have the first one hundred years old extant programming language.

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Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by hotelsacher on Friday October 16, 2026 @10:19AM (#50118690)

That's only a bit less than half an eternity. Programming languages may have been supplanted by vibe slop by then.

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Re:Celebrating 70 Years of Fortran by fuzztester on Friday October 16, 2026 @07:16PM (#50126048)

Yes, if it is still extant by then, and not extinct.

But it likely will still be extant, along with COBOL. And Lisp.

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