Appendix 1: Fortran and Pascal

Advantages of Fortran:

• Fortran is a simple language
• Fortran has always existed
• Fortran compilers are generally available
• Earlier the first programming language
• Used commercially for technical and scientific computations
• Scientists have no interest in learning new languages
• Good at numerical analysis and technical calculations
• It is necessary to structure the problem in order to use Fortran
• A large number of programs and routines in Fortran are exchanged internationally
• Efficient compilers
• The first standardized programming language
• Better standard obedience than other languages
• Is continually developed (a new version each decade)
• The dominating language on supercomputers

Differences between Fortran 77 and Pascal:

• Fortran doesn't use assignments with := or end of statements with ;
• Fortran doesn't have reserved words, it has short identifiers, the identifiers do not have to be specified
• Fortran does not have records, pointers, user-defined types, scalar types, subintervals, but it has COMPLEX and DOUBLE PRECISION
• Fortran 77 does not have WHILE and REPEAT
• Fortran did not get IF THEN ELSE ENDIF until 1978
• A bad CASE in Fortran 77. Fortran 77 is not able to nest functions and subroutines and does not permit recursive calls
• Fortran has very good input and output, but those facilities are very difficult to learn
• Fortran has separate compilation
• Fortran manages national characters in comments and output
• The punched card orientation with Fortran can still give some problems
• Blanks are not significant (except now in the fixed form of Fortran 90)
• Mixing of integers and floating-point numbers is implemented differently
• Arrays in Fortran 77 have to be assigned values using an explicit loop
• Fortran programs are usually less well structured then Pascal programs
• Argument association is different
• Common data are treated differently

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