Difference Between COBOL and FORTRAN
Last Updated :
25 Feb, 2022
COBOL stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, while FORTRAN stands for Formula Translation.
What is COBOL?
The COBOL computer programming language is a compiled English-like language designed for business. Businesses and governments have been using COBOL for years for business, finance, and administrative systems. Codasyl created COBOL in 1959, based on part on Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC programming language. It is a portable programming language for data processing created by the US Department of Defense.
What is FORTRAN?
A compiled imperative programming language, FORTRAN is particularly suited to numeric computations and scientific computing. In the 1950s, IBM developed Fortran primarily for scientific and engineering applications, and it gradually took over scientific computing. Since it was developed over six decades ago, it has been used in computationally intensive areas such as numerical weather prediction, finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, geophysics, computational physics, crystallography, and computational chemistry.
Despite their similarities in structure and functionality, both languages are very different. As opposed to FORTRAN, COBOL was flow-oriented, making it less impressive technically. Despite its popularity, computer scientists argue that it is one of the worst programming languages out there. COBOL is more in tune with auditors, while FORTRAN was created for scientists. FORTRAN is a free-flowing language whereas COBOL is structured and formalized. In reality, these languages are considerably different in terms of structure and usefulness.
Difference Between the COBOL and FORTRAN:
- COBOL is developed by CODASYL, ANSI, ISO, on the other hand, FORTRAN is developed by John Backus at IBM.
- COBOL was created with commercial applications in mind. Banking systems, insurance companies, and government offices have all utilized it, while FORTRAN is a programming language for mainframe computers that was created to translate formulas. It is best suited for scientific and mathematical operations.
- COBOL is not a general-purpose programming language. Parameterized classes can be used to provide support for generic languages, whereas, FORTRAN is a generic language, which makes it efficient since compile-time errors may be fixed more quickly.
- COBOL is an imperative programming language, which means it tells the computer "what to do." COBOL's most notable feature is its imperative and procedural design, on the other hand, FORTRAN is both a compiled imperative and an Object-oriented programming language.
- COBOL is a procedural language and it does not support Procedural recursion while FORTRAN is a compiled imperative programming language designed for scientific and numerical computations.
- COBOL is Procedural, Imperative, and object-oriented. While, FORTRAN is Concurrent, array-based, shared-memory/native distributed parallelism and vectorized.
- COBOL has a Weak and Static typing discipline. While FORTRAN has strong, static, and manifests-based typing discipline.
- COBOL has been revised four times from its standardized date 1968. Whereas, FORTRAN has been revised nine times.
Difference Between Table (COBOL Vs FORTRAN):
| COBOL | FORTRAN |
|---|
| COBOL is developed by CODASYL, ANSI, ISO. | FORTRAN is developed by John Backus at IBM. |
| COBOL was created with commercial applications in mind. Banking systems, insurance companies, and government offices have all utilized it | FORTRAN is a programming language for mainframe computers that was created to translate formulas. It is best suited for scientific and mathematical operations. |
| COBOL is not a general-purpose programming language. Parameterized classes can be used to provide support for generic languages. | FORTRAN is a generic language, which makes it efficient since compile-time errors may be fixed more quickly. |
| COBOL is an imperative programming language, which means it tells the computer "what to do." COBOL's most notable feature is its imperative and procedural design | FORTRAN is both a compiled imperative and an Object-oriented programming language. |
| COBOL is a procedural language and it does not support Procedural recursion. | FORTRAN is a compiled imperative programming language designed for scientific and numerical computations. |
| COBOL is Procedural, Imperative, and object-oriented. | FORTRAN is Concurrent, array-based, shared-memory/native distributed parallelism and vectorized. |
| COBOL has a Weak and Static typing discipline. | FORTRAN has strong, static, and manifests-based typing discipline. |
| COBOL has been revised four times from its standardized date 1968. |
FORTRAN has been revised nine times till date.
|
Similar Reads
Difference between C++ and Go C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in 1979 as an extension of the C languageC++ is a general-purpose programming language and is widely used nowadays for competitive programming. It has imperative, object-oriented, and generic programming features. C++ is a widely popular language a
2 min read
Difference between CLI and GUI A Command Line Interface (CLI) and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) are two distinct methods for interacting with computer systems and software. CLI allows users to execute commands by typing them into a terminal or console providing precise control and efficiency but requiring knowledge of command
4 min read
Difference between Go and Erlang 1. GO : Go or Golang is a statically typed(i.e. the datatype of variables are needed to be defined before compilation) open-source procedural-oriented programming language. It was designed at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson and was released on the 10th of November 2009. The la
4 min read
Difference between COMP and COMP3 Computer stores the data in more than one form. The Cobol language facilitates the programmer to specify the internal representation of the data according to the need. There are two internal forms available in the Cobol:DISPLAY: It is the default internal representation of the data. Any type of data
5 min read
Difference between Program and Function 1. Program : Program, as name suggest, are set or collection of instructions used by computer to execute specific task and these are created using particular programming languages such as C++, Python, Ruby, etc. 2. Function : Function, as name suggests, is basic concept in computer programming that
2 min read
Difference between C and Objective C The language C was developed in early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for the UNIX Operating system. It a general purpose, procedural programming language. The language is used for developing system applications as well as desktop applications. To learn more about C language refer to https://www. geeksforge
4 min read