Fortran is a programming language born in 1950 and still used after half a century of existence. Its name originates from the “Formula Translating System.” Older versions of this language were known as FORTRAN, but after Fortran 90 the name was not fully capitalized.
Although at first, it was a procedural language, the latest versions included support for object programming. The first FORTRAN compiler was developed for IBM 704 in 1954–57 by an IBM team led by John W. Backus. This was an optimization compiler because the authors felt that no one would have used the language if its performance had not been comparable to the Assembler.
The language was widely adopted by scientists for writing programs that used numbers intensively, which encouraged compiler authors to produce their software in such a way as to generate code faster. In particular, the inclusion of a complex number data type in the FORTRAN language has made it suitable for use in computational science.
Numerous language standards have emerged: FORTRAN II in 1958, FORTRAN IV in 1961, FORTRAN 66 in 1966, FORTRAN 77 in 1977, Fortran 90 in 1990, Fortran 95 in 1995, and Fortran 2003 in 2003. Fortran III was created in 1958, leaving the possibility of including assembly code of Inline type in its programs but was never used because the concept of portability of a high-level language would have been lost.
Haskell is a functional programming language. It is named after Curry Haskell. Haskell is based on the semantics but not on the syntax of the Miranda programming language, which served to concentrate the efforts of the initial Haskell working group.
Haskell is widely used in academia and industry.
Haskell’s latest version is Haskell 2010. Starting of May 2016, a group of programmers has been working on the next version, Haskell 2020.
After the launch of Miranda by Research Software Ltd. in 1985, interest in functional languages increased. By 1987, there were more than a dozen purely functional programming languages. Miranda was the most used but did not have free software but one with copyright.
Unlike imperative languages that manipulate data in the form of integers or values encoded by integers (characters, strings, pointers), functional languages manipulate functions encoded by “lambda expressions.”
If the functional language is compiled, it is encoded by combiners.
As the multitude of functions is richer than that of integers (it has a larger cardinal), such languages are much more expressive.
At the pragmatic level, any functional language can be seen as a manipulator of algorithms, expressed most often as in elementary mathematics.
Main features of Haskell:
1. In Haskell, you can write secure programs, the functions of the functional language being unaffected by external effects, such as changes in global variables.
2. In Haskell, you can manipulate algorithms as functions. This opens the door to a number of domains including genetic algorithms, some optimizations, programming templates, artificial intelligence, adaptive systems, and other domains.
3. In Haskell, purely functional language, without side effects, the functions always give the same result, which allows guaranteeing the quality of the software. It also allows the demonstration of its quality.
4. You can encapsulate top-level programming templates.